Alas for the catcher's self-complacency! This grouping of Owen and Patterson and the Hillbury game brought Rob suddenly back from the delightful vision of what might have been to the reality of the present. It wasn't to be Patterson and Owen now, but Patterson and Borland. Owen was relegated to right field, and to catching O'Connell! The sunlight suddenly disappeared from Rob's ingenuous face, and black discouragement replaced it. Laughlin observed him with curiosity.
"Only it'll be Patterson and Borland in the Hillbury game," Rob said, regaining his smile by main force. "Poole's going to have Patterson pitch to Borland after this."
"How's that?" demanded Laughlin. And Rob explained with an explanation which suggested a question, and the question in turn produced an answer involving another question, and so there developed a chain of questions and answers linked together like the mathematical series Laughlin had been studying that week in his advanced algebra, but unlike them in having a definite limit and result. This result was that Rob threw aside his reserve and told the whole story of his ambition and disappointment, from the first weeks of the fall when Carle forgot him, through the months of independent cage work with Patterson, to the disheartening issue of that afternoon's game.
"It isn't that I'm such a wonder," he concluded, "or that I want to play whether I'm better than Borland or not; but I don't think it's right for 'em to assume that I'm no good, and pay no attention to what I do. And then to take Patterson away from me just when I've got him into shape, when he wouldn't be worth a cent if I hadn't coached him all winter—I call that dirty mean!"
Laughlin rose and went to the window, where he stood for a brief time gazing across the way at the village urchins noisily romping before their schoolhouse. Then he turned: "It does seem hard luck, but I've found out that things usually turn out right if you're right yourself. I, for one, was glad to hear that Carle had gone. He isn't the stuff good men are made of. If he had stayed, he'd have played us some worse trick. Poole doesn't think so, but Poole doesn't know such fellows as well as I do. Another thing Poole doesn't know is that you're really a better catcher than Borland. It's up to you to go straight ahead and play your game as well as you can, and he'll see what you are before the season's over. When he does see, he'll chuck Borland in a minute. Poole is as straight a fellow as ever breathed, but he makes mistakes like the rest of us. I know from my own experience as captain that it's hard always to pick out the best man. There was Wolcott Lindsay last fall playing on the second eleven up to two weeks of the Hillbury game; and in the game, light as he was, he turned out the best guard on the field. Take my advice: just hold on, play your best game all the time, and keep your courage up."
They stood confronting each other—Laughlin, a square, powerful figure with sincerity and earnestness apparent in every tone of his voice and every line of his rugged face; Owen, with eyes aflame and cheeks flushed, eagerly drinking in his visitor's words. It was appreciation like this that he had been pining for; it gladdened him and at the same time thrilled him through and through.
"There's another thing you can learn from Lindsay's experience," the football man went on. "It pays to work up. The best athletes in the school have almost always been those who had to make a place for themselves. The fellows who come with reputations and condescend to play usually slump early."
He held out his hand. "I must be going; well, good luck to you!"
"Thank you a lot," rejoined Owen, eagerly grasping the big, thick fist. "You won't say anything to Poole about this, will you?"
"Of course not; you've got to work your own way out."