But there must be more ceremony than that. Peter looked around to see that he and the baby were alone. Then he spoke to him distinctly although emotionally. He realized now that his intuition had been sound when he had said way back weeks ago at the Newspaper Club. "My son has just been born." He had never had any doubt about his physical paternity but that did not seem important. It was spiritual kinship which counted and an eyebrow like that was a thing of the spirit.
"You're my son all right," said Peter, "and you're going to have my name. Peter Neale, that's your name."
He thought it would complicate things to go into the question of whether he should be Peter Neale, Jr. or Peter Neale, 2nd. The Peter Neale was the important part of it. "I guess maybe you can do a lot more with that name than I have, but I've made it a good newspaper name. You can make it a better one maybe. We'll wait and see." He reached out and took the small hand of Peter Neale and shook it. The prayer which went with it was silent. "O God, give him some of the breaks and I will." That completed the christening. It was all that young Peter ever got.
The red-headed boy up the block who had contributed disturbing ideas in other fields also threw a bombshell into Peter's boyhood theology. "Can God do anything?" was his catch question. "Of course He can," replied Peter. "Well, I'll just bet you a million billion dollars He can't make a trolley car go in two directions at the same time." Peter didn't see how He could. He puzzled over the problem for months and at last he decided that maybe God could work it by making the trolley car like an elastic so that it could be stretched up town and down town at the same time. It was not an entirely satisfactory solution of the problem. If a passenger stood in the middle of the car he wouldn't get any place at all.
But for the moment Peter was not much concerned with the potential relationship between the Deity and young Peter. He could bide his time and think up an answer for the day when the child should ask him, "Who's God?" The immediate problem was what place he should fill on the Bulletin. Eventually, of course, he would conduct the column called, "Looking Them Over With Peter Neale." Already there were thirty-one papers in the syndicate and some day Peter could step down and the column would still be "Looking Them Over With Peter Neale."
It would be pleasant not to die in the office but to have ten years or so with no worries as to whether Jim Jeffries could have beaten John L. Sullivan in his prime. And he didn't want to go on forever writing on the question of whether more nerve was required to hole a ten foot putt in a championship match or bring down a halfback on the five yard line. In those last ten years he would have all the fun of reading a Peter Neale column without having to write it. The job had come to him by the merest chance. But young Peter could be trained from the beginning for the work. "I'll start his education right now," Peter resolved and then he looked at the baby and decided that there didn't seem to be anything specific which could be done immediately. Still an early start was possible. Long division ought to be easy and interesting for a child who knew that it was something used in computing batting averages. Of course young Peter would receive an excellent general education. There wasn't any reason why a sporting writer shouldn't be a person of well rounded culture. Sometimes Peter regretted that his Harvard career had lasted only a year. Probably his sporting poems might have been better if he had been able to go on and take that course in versification. Fine arts and history would not be a waste of time.
There was never any telling when some stray scrap of information could be pressed into service for a sporting story. For instance Peter had been struck by that quotation from Walter Pater about the Mona Lisa which he had happened upon in a Sunday newspaper story. Two years later he had been able to use it about Ed Dunkhurst, the human freight car, by paraphrasing the line to read, "Here is the head upon which all the jabs of the world have come and the eyelids are a little weary."
The quotation had given distinction to the story. Sporting writing ought to be just as distinguished as a man could make it. The days of the lowbrow commentator were disappearing. Young Peter might very well carry on and expand the tradition which he had begun. To be sure, there wasn't any hurry about giving him the job. Twenty-five years more for himself would be about right. By that time young Peter would be just twenty-five years and three weeks old. A year or so of general work on the city staff of the Bulletin might be good for him. Indeed anything on the newspaper would do for a start. That was, anything real. Book critics and people like that weren't really newspaper men. On his fiftieth birthday, perhaps, Peter would go to the managing editor and say, "I'm through and there's just one thing I want from the Bulletin. I think it's only fair that you should let me name my successor."
And the managing editor would say, "Why, of course, Neale, who is it to be?"
"His name is Peter Neale."