“Swell chance now we’ll have of winning the pennant,” groaned Shiner.
“Not a Chinaman’s chance,” mourned Pee Wee.
“I can see us coming in as tail-enders,” prophesied Sparrow.
“Was such a dirty trick ever heard of?” wailed Billy Bassett, appealing to high heaven, as though even in his grief he was asking the answer to a riddle.
Bobby had had time now to get a grip on himself, and although his heart was hot within him, he was outwardly the coolest of them all.
“Tom Hicksley will pay for this all right,” he declared. “Some time the truth will come out and I hope it will be soon. I haven’t any doubt of course that he did it himself. Then he got cold feet when he saw how angry Mr. Leith was and fibbed out of it.”
“Of course, he’d fib out of it!” exclaimed Fred. “Nobody who knows Tom Hicksley would expect him to do anything else. But why did he put it on you?”
“Because he’s sore at me, I suppose,” Bobby answered. “He’s always hated me since that afternoon on the train.”
“Yes, but he’s just as sore at the rest of us who butted in, as he calls it,” persisted Fred. “It’s something more than that, Bobby. It’s because you saved the game when he had almost lost it.”
“He’s never forgiven you for that,” agreed Mouser.