“Under the circumstances what would you have me do?”
At last he had asked her advice. Now she could speak. She did so eagerly.
“Accept the offer the Federals have made you.”
“My dear,” he said, “would you have me do that, with my own mind in doubt as to whether or not I was worth a dollar to them? Would you have me take the ten thousand I could get, knowing all the time that they might be paying it for a has-been who wasn’t worth ten cents? Would that be honest?”
“You can be honest, then,” she hurriedly declared. “No one knows for a certainty, not even yourself, that you can’t come back to your old form. You can go to the manager and tell him the truth about yourself. Can’t you do that?”
“And then what? Probably he wouldn’t want me after that at any price.”
“You can make a fair bargain with him. You can have it put in the contract that you are to get that money if you do come back and make good as a pitcher.”
Lefty laughed. “I think it would be the first time on record that a ball player ever went to a manager who was eager to sign him up, and made such a proposition. It would be honest, Janet; but if the manager believed me, if he saw I was serious, do you fancy he’d feel like coming across with the first year’s salary in advance and the bonus? You see I can’t raise the money I need, and be honest.”
She wrung her hands and came back to the first question that had leaped from her lips: “What can you do?”
“I don’t think I’ll make any decisive move until I find out what sort of queer business is going on in the Blue Stockings camp. I could get money through Kennedy if he were coming back. Everything is up in the air.”