Janet’s blue eyes flashed. “It’s simply dreadful!” she panted. “Every day last year I got the score of the games, and it made me ill when our team went to pieces at last, the way it did. And everybody has been saying we’d surely beat Bancroft this year. Hear them mocking us over there! Oh, I’m sorry I came to-day!”
“Cheer up; the game isn’t lost just because a false alarm is unmasking himself in the first inning. The home crowd is getting hot now, and they’ll demand that the fellow be benched directly. We’ve got other pitchers, you know.”
“Other pitchers! Don’t call this one a pitcher! He’s a—a—”
“A flash in the pan,” laughed King. “It’s a good thing he has betrayed himself right off the reel, for that will give us all the more time to recover from the shock. There, there goes the second batter to first. Now hear the crowd rub it into the poor dub. Oh, say! they’re soaking him. There’ll be a riot if he isn’t sent to the stable pretty quick. Listen to that! I knew it!”
The exasperated Kingsbridgers were howling for the removal of Locke, the cry to take him out immediately swelling into a roar from all sides of the field. Forgetting the cautioning words of her companion, Miss Harting again sprang to her feet.
“Take him out!” she cried; but her voice was drowned in the mighty volume of sound.
“Steady, Janet,” said Bent, taking hold of her arm with one hand and gently drawing her back to the seat. “This racket is making the nags nervous, and I’d hate to spill you out, after promising your grudging father to look after you and see that nothing happened. They’ll have to put the blanket on Lefty now. The crowd won’t stand for any more of him.”
On the Kingsbridge bench Henry Cope and Manager Hutchinson were arguing over it, the former hot and insistent, the latter cold and unemotionally scornful.
“One chance more—give him another show,” demanded Cope. “I tell ye I know he can pitch.”
“Perhaps he can pitch hay,” returned Hutchinson; “but not baseball. Listen to that howling mob. They’ll murder him pretty quick. I don’t want the responsibility on my shoulders.”