“Hm! You look more than that. I suppose now you’d like to play with these chaps, eh?”
“Yes, sir, I’d like to very much.”
“Well, I wish you could.” Mr. Cummings was frowningly silent for awhile. Pete Farrar—a long, rangy, and somewhat seedy youth of seventeen—was in the box for the school nine. He had an eccentric “wind-up” that included whirling his right arm around at the shoulder several times like a wind-mill. But most of the effort went into the “wind-up” and not enough, it seemed, into the delivery. At any rate, his performance that afternoon was pretty poor. He passed the first man up in the first half of the third and was hit for a two-bagger by the second. The scrubs got two runs across in that inning. Tom concluded that he liked the scrubs’ pitcher better. He was a youngster named Moran who, if he put on less “side,” seemed to have far better control. But perhaps, Tom charitably added to himself, this was an off-day with Farrar. As the teams changed places again Captain Warner went to bat. Mr. Cummings broke a long silence.
“Tom,” he said, “couldn’t we fix it somehow so you could play ball? How many games do they play a week?”
“Usually two, sir.”
“Well, don’t it seem as if you could get off two afternoons?”
“I’m afraid that wouldn’t do any good, sir, because, you see, I’d have to practise with the team if I was to play on it. I guess there isn’t any way I could play, Mr. Cummings, unless I was to quit working, and I couldn’t afford to do that.”
“How much practice would it take?” persisted Mr. Cummings.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Well, it seems to me that, if these chaps need you as badly as they say they do, it’s a shame you can’t play. And I’m going to see if we can’t fix it somehow, Tom. I suppose Horace will think I’m crazy, though,” he added half aloud.