"Give me cricket," moaned Mr. Mole. "It is a decent and respectable game. You don't want to get your life insured before you engage in it."
Morris Hart could not refrain from smiling; but he hurried away to get a conveyance which would take Mr. Mole to the hospital.
He would have sent him to his hotel, but the professor wished to have the best advice he could get, and he knew he was sure of having excellent treatment at a hospital.
Accordingly he was taken to a hospital in New York and put to bed, when the surgeon set the broken leg and assured him that in a few weeks he would be able to get about again on crutches.
"Heaven help me," said Mole. "What a fool I am getting in my old age. Here am I in a strange country, and ought to have known better than to indulge in the barbarous games of the people. Confound base-ball and the man who invented it; but it serves me right. I have no one but myself to blame."
[CHAPTER XVI.]
BAMBINO IN THE HOSPITAL.
Mr. Mole was in the accident ward, and many poor wretches were sighing and groaning around him.
In the next bed on the right-hand side was a man who appeared in a comatose state.