“I guess you’re pretty good, from what I hear. I’m picking up some fellows for a game next Saturday. How’d you like to make one of the nine?”
“You—you don’t want me, do you?” Lenning inquired curiously.
“Sure I want you.”
“Who’s going to play?”
“Ballard, and Clancy, and I; then Mexican Joe, if we can get him, and a few chaps from the O. A. C.”
“I reckon you better count me out,” said Lenning, turning his face away. “It wouldn’t be pleasant for your chums, or the O. A. C. fellows, to have me around.”
“Bother that! I’m bossing this nine, and I guess that whatever I say will have to go. Don’t be foolish, Len. I’ve got a special reason for wanting you in that game.”
“What reason?” Lenning, steadily enough, brought back his gaze and fixed it on Merriwell.
“For one thing,” explained Frank, “there’s nothing like a good, stiff contest on a ball field to level the differences one chap may have against another. I’ve seen out-and-out enemies play together, help each other in a pinch, according to league rules, and then, when the game was done, forget that they’d ever had a grouch. Something queer about what the diamond can do in a case of that kind, but it’s a fact, all the same.”
Lenning’s face clouded and filled with distrust.