“It would be hard for a person to believe that a thing like that could happen,” he remarked, “unless he witnessed it with his own eyes. The whole affair is absurd on the face of it, and yet there is no doubt of the genuineness of Pophagan’s sentiments. Well, well! That is carrying suggestion to an extreme.”
“I wonder,” said Ballard, a little pensively, “if he’s trying to turn the joke on us?”
“Not on your life,” answered Clancy. “If that thermometer registered zero, when the temperature was really where it is now, Pop would put on his ear muffs and his fur-lined overcoat.”
“That’s the trouble with a good many of us,” said the colonel. “Often we’re not ruled by common sense, but by a very foolish habit.”
There were several things connected with this incident of the thermometer which Merriwell was to remember later; and the most of them had, for a basis, the few comments made by Colonel Hawtrey.
“It’s definitely settled, then,” went on the colonel, “that the ball game is to be played next Saturday?”
“Yes,” Merriwell answered. “We’ll have to do a little hustling to get our nine together, but I think we can make it.”
“You know pretty well where you’re to get your material?”
“I’ve been going over that in my mind, colonel, and I think I have every position filled.”
“You’ll pitch, of course?”