By Harold Case
“There she is,” said Hal. “Now what do you think of that?” They read it through together. Eight whole pages. It was almost exactly as Hal had written it. The editor had changed a word here and there and it was illustrated with imaginative pictures of Hans at the Grand Central, Hans dealing with the driver of the funeral coach, Hans hanging out of the bath-room window, and every kind of way.
“By George,” said Hans. “You are an author and it would be rude to lick an author, but you won’t have to canvass for the magazine subscribers for a month or two anyhow.”
“Well, you won’t either,” said Hal. “We’ll divide it up and when the money’s spent, I’ll send you on another trip to New York, and if you can get something else to happen to you, I may be able to get another story.”
Then they went down to the bank and had the check cashed and Hal counted out one hundred and twenty-five dollars which he gave to Hans who immediately put his in the bank again, to his own credit, while Hal rolled his up, put a rubber band around it and stuffed it in his trousers’ pocket.
[CHAPTER XIV]
PREPARATIONS AT THE RIVAL COLLEGE
The progress of the nine was quite satisfactory to Hughie and the coaches and they began to feel as though they had the championship again in their inside pockets, and they were right in thinking so, because never before in all the ball teams put together, in college or out, had there been so many individual stars on any one team.
“This,” said Hughie, talking with Penny who had been down for a week, “has been the greatest luck that any baseball manager ever had, to find himself at the beginning of the training season with five of the most important positions of the team vacant and then to discover among the freshmen, a bunch of fellows like Case, Hagner, Robb, Talkington and Radams who make good right away. Of course, I’d not tell them so to their faces, but those fellows are playing their positions better than any fellows who ever played those corners before. They ought to be world’s champions. Those boys, especially when steadied by the more experienced bunch we have left, Everson, Larke, Gibbs, Black and Delvin, ought to beat any team in the world.”