CHAPTER XVIII
EMPTY BOXES
June had come and the end of school loomed close at hand. So, too, loomed the final baseball game with Petersburg. It is an unfortunate thing for ardent athletes that the crowning contests of the year arrive simultaneously with final examinations! There is no doubt in the world but that examinations seriously interfere with a whole-hearted application to sports. Most of the members of the Amesville team were agreed that something ought to be done about it; such, for instance, as abolishing the examinations! However, Petersburg was in no better case, and that evened matters up.
Amesville dropped a couple of games the second week in June, just to vary the monotony, perhaps, and then came back and overwhelmed Crowell Academy with a score of 10 to 1. Crowell was a much-heralded team from a down-State preparatory school, and Amesville did well to pile up the score she did, especially as, at the last moment, Tom Pollock found that he couldn’t pitch and Jack Strobe sent word that someone would have to take his place in left field! Jack, who had been complaining for a day or two of a sore throat, was, it seemed, prohibited from playing by an unfeeling doctor. Loomis went into left field and Toby Williams took the mound, and both performed creditably. In fact, Toby rather covered himself with glory that day, having eight strike-outs to his credit when the fray was over. Joe played all through at first, as he had been doing since the second Lynton engagement, and put up a rattling good game. Even Frank Foley’s adherents had to acknowledge that the new first baseman had everything the deposed one had, and, when it came to batting, a good deal more. Joe didn’t particularly distinguish himself at the bat this day, but he got a clean single and a base on balls in four times up. Foley had been used in the last two contests for an inning or two at second base, but it was generally conceded that he was now only a substitute, with small likelihood of getting into either of the two remaining contests.
After the game that Wednesday afternoon Joe hurried to Jack’s house and demanded audience of that afflicted person. But, to his surprise and dismay, Mrs. Strobe met him with the information that Jack was suffering from a severe attack of quinsy and that the doctor had prohibited visitors, since the disease was more or less contagious. Joe had to be satisfied with sending a message to his chum. That evening, however, Jack called him up on the telephone and bewailed his luck. The only comfort Jack appeared able to derive from the situation lay in the fact that Frank Foley had not stolen a march on him by playing that afternoon.
“The doc says I’ll have to stay at home until Monday, at least,” he said. “I’ll lose Saturday’s game. If Frank manages to get into that and then should play for an inning against Petersburg, as he’s likely to, it’s all off! Isn’t that the dickens? Just when I thought I had that wager cinched, too!”
Joe was properly sympathetic and Jack finally rang off, exacting a promise from Joe to call up the next day. Aunt Sarah insisted that Joe should spray his throat after the interview. It didn’t do, she said, to take risks, and for her part she was far from convinced that folks couldn’t catch things over the telephone!
When, the next afternoon, on the way to the field, Joe stopped in at a drug store and called up Jack it was Mrs. Strobe who answered. Jack, she said, was not so well today and she thought it best for him not to try to talk. Joe went on to practice feeling rather worried about his chum, and wasn’t comforted until Mr. Talbot had assured him that quinsy seldom, if ever, resulted fatally. On Friday there was no practice for the players, and Joe, rather at a loose-end, accepted Sidney Morris’s invitation to go to the “movies.” It was well after five when he reached the Adams Building. Mr. Chester Young was talking in a low voice with a man who looked to Joe very much like a bill-collector. Whoever he was, he presently departed with no great show of satisfaction. The day’s business had been, Joe discovered, surprisingly poor, the register showing less than nine dollars. And when Young reminded Joe that it was pay-day, Joe had to dig into his pocket for enough to make up the difference between the cash on hand and the amount of the clerk’s wages.
He called up the Strobes on the telephone after supper and talked for a few minutes with Mr. Strobe. That gentleman announced that Jack was feeling pretty mean, but that the doctor thought he was doing as well as could be expected and that he would probably be out and about by the first of the week. After that Joe settled down to two hours of hard study in preparation for next week’s examinations, wrote a long letter to his mother and finally went to bed just as midnight sounded.
In the morning he went back to the news-stand and remained there until noon. Saturday was usually the best day of the week for business, possibly because many of the offices paid off their employees then, and today both Joe and Young were kept busy attending to the wants of customers. When Joe went home for dinner the sales had already mounted to over fifteen dollars and gave promise of atoning for the poor business of the day previous.
The game that afternoon was with Chelmsford High School and was looked on as more of a practice contest than a real game. It was the last contest before the Petersburg battle on the following Wednesday, and Amesville had purposely chosen an easy victim for the occasion. But at that the home team had to work fairly hard for half a dozen innings before the game was safely laid away, and, as it happened, it was Joe who was chiefly instrumental in that ceremony.