“Not yet,” replied Wayne cheerfully, rolling the ball from mitt to hand and tossing it back to Herring. “There’s no hurry, I reckon.”
“Better not leave it too long,” advised Cotton. “Chris Farrel’ll be sending another rookie along first thing anyone knows. He’s a great one for that sort of thing.”
“Oh, Chris is all right,” said Herring. “He discovered Cob Morgan and Bee Bennett, didn’t he? And I sort of guess they ain’t so poor.”
“Chris makes about one lucky guess in ten,” observed Pitcher Crane, “but maybe that’s a good average. I don’t know.”
“You twirling this afternoon, Nick?” asked Herring.
“I guess so. The boss is crazy to cop the next two games.”
“Don’t look like it,” said Cotton innocently. “You’d think he’d put a good pitcher in today.”
Crane only smiled. Nick, in the words of the Harrisville baseball scribes, was the “dean of the pitching corps,” and didn’t have to answer such aspersions. Just then Manager Milburn summoned Herring to take Casey’s place on the mound and Wayne was for removing his mitt. Young, however, suggested his taking Nye off his hands and Wayne assented. “Hop” was easy after Herring, for he used straight balls a good deal and although they came like lightning they were far easier to judge than “Red’s” eccentric slants. Later, when the players moved to the nets, Wayne encountered another of Manager Milburn’s sarcastic glances, but he didn’t mind. As long as the manager didn’t object to his being on the field during practice Wayne was for the present satisfied.
That afternoon he received a letter, forwarded from Medfield, that brought his heart into his mouth as he read the postmark and recognized the writing. It was from his stepfather, and for a moment Wayne hesitated to open it, fearing that it was a summons home. But it wasn’t. Mr. Higgins was brief and decided. “Understand,” he wrote, “that this is your doing and not mine. Don’t come home here expecting me to take you in again for I won’t. And don’t apply to me for money. You won’t get any. You will have to get along by your own efforts. I hope you will do so, but nothing I have ever seen of you leads me to expect it.”