"I'll tell you what I'll do," answered Joe. "I'll write to the dealers in baseball supplies for catalogues of their goods and also ask them for advertising pictures. Maybe they'll be glad to send 'em along."
The news had circulated that our young friends were going to organize a baseball club, and, as was to be expected, it became the talk of the town. Many of the lads were very enthusiastic, but others, who had not been invited to attend the first meeting, "stuck up their noses" when the matter was mentioned to them.
"That club won't amount to a hill of beans," said one of the big boys, a lad named Voup. "Why, the Westmore boys can't play ball a little bit, and that Fred Rush is too stout to do anything on the diamond."
"Well, why don't you organize a club then, Si?" asked one of Voup's cronies.
"Maybe I will," answered Silas Voup. "If I do, will you join, Sid?"
"To be sure I'll join," came from Sidney Yates. "Say, wouldn't it be great if we organized a club and knocked the spots out of the other club," he added, earnestly.
"Reckon we can do it. I could pitch and you could catch, and we could get Longback Muggs for shortstop. That Westmore crowd wouldn't be in it with us."
"Right you are, Si! Let us organize by all means. We can meet in my father's carriage house." And then and there Silas Voup and Sidney Yates laid their plans for organizing a rival club to defeat the other organization. It may be added here that both Voup and Yates belonged to the aristocratic branch of the Lakeport community. They considered themselves a trifle superior to the other boys, and spent a good deal of their pocket money for cigarettes and pool playing. Their arrogant manners were the cause of the Westmores and Fred Rush leaving them severely alone.
Joe was the first to go home from the carpenter shop, and as soon as he appeared his mother sent him down to his father's store for a bag of flour. When the youth arrived at the store he found his parent very much exercised over something.
"What's the matter, father?" he questioned.