So he set his jaws, clenched his fists, and took everything the manager had to say, fully expecting the tirade to end in his being thrown out of the squad.
When Brennan finally concluded his spirited monologue with a pyrotechnic burst to the effect that he proposed taking the blankety-blank bonehead personally in hand the next morning for the purpose of beating a little elemental baseball into his thick skull, and then strode away with eyebrows twitching, it was a full minute before Lefty realized that it had not come. He had not been fired!
“Well, I’ll be hanged!” he exclaimed aloud, his eyebrows drawn together in a puzzled frown. “Why didn’t he do it? What use can he have for me after to-day?”
For a while he stood there, trying to fathom the reason. Then he gave it up and started for the gate. The others had long since left the park, and he made his way back to the hotel alone, took his shower, and came down to the dining-room ten minutes late.
For all the comfort he got out of his companions Lefty might as well have been alone at the table. From the beginning of the meal to its long-drawn-out finish not a single word was addressed directly to him. The others talked over him, around him, at him, but never to him. Among themselves, but in tones which plainly showed that their remarks were aimed at Lefty, they discussed that miserable first inning in detail, pointing out how different the result would have been with any one but a quitter in the box. They made many other scornful comments, and the southpaw was hard pressed to maintain a stolid, impassive demeanor. Not for the world would he have them guess how much they were hurting him.
By supper time the determined ostracism of his cub companions had so worked on Lefty that his nerves were raw. He even caught Stillman regarding him queerly, and that was the last straw. He felt, somehow, that if he did not confide in some one he would blow up; so, after supper, he cornered his classmate in the lobby, and poured the whole story into his astonished ears.
When Locke had finished, Stillman gave a long whistle of incredulous astonishment.
“That’s the rottenest thing I ever heard of!” he exclaimed indignantly. “No wonder you went to smash that way. But look here, old fellow, are you certain about the drug part of it? Isn’t it possible that you had some sort of an attack of indigestion or something?”