The coach went away dissatisfied, and Tom sighed regretfully for what might have been. An enticing vision of Tom Pollock, attired in the brown-and-blue of Amesville High School, standing commandingly in the pitcher’s box and dealing puzzling curves to a bewildered opponent, came to him, and he sighed again as he folded up a pair of running trunks and laid them away in their flat pasteboard box.
Sidney evolved all sorts of schemes for Tom’s emancipation from labour, including a popular subscription to reimburse him for his wages and a direct appeal by the athletic association, backed up by the school in general, to Cummings and Wright!
“But I can’t pitch much, anyway!” Tom would declare, at last a bit impatient. “You seem to think I’m a wonder, but, shucks, I wouldn’t last two innings against Petersburg! All I’ve got is an out-shoot and a straight ball!”
“Yes, a straight ball that goes about ninety miles an hour and crosses the plate so fast you can’t see it until ten minutes after! And you’re learning the drop, too! Of course, I don’t claim that you’re as good as Thorny Brooks yet, but I do say that if you came out and let Bat Talbot get hold of you you’d be a peach by the middle of the season. And I think it’s a shame you can’t!”
And Tom thought so, too, although he didn’t say it!
[CHAPTER XV]
THE PUMP CHANGES HANDS
In April, after the roads dried off, Tom engaged one of Malloy’s trucks to bring the pump in from the farm. It cost him ten dollars and he sometimes doubted the wisdom of it. Uncle Israel remitted the storage charge when confronted with the money.
“Guess,” he said, “as Cummings knocked off four dollars and a half to you, Tom, we won’t say anything about storage. I guess you’re a fool, though, to pay those men ten dollars to lug that thing to town, because you’ll never sell it for more’n that.”