“Take you! Of course I’ll take you!” exclaimed Miss Morton. “I have to stop for a girl friend, who is going to the game with me, but there’ll be plenty of room for you.”
“I’ll ride on the mud guard or hang on back!” exclaimed Bill, a gleam of hope lighting his woe-begone countenance. “Only I want to beat Tuckerton!”
“And I want you to, even if a—a friend of mine goes there. I think it was an awfully mean trick they played on you.”
“Oh, I’m not sure any Tuckerton fellows did it,” said Bill, who wanted to play fair. “It may have been some of the Westfield crowd,” but he had his own opinion.
Miss Morton, who had come to the station to inquire about some express package, hurried out to her car, followed by Bill. He offered to run it for her, but she was not a little proud of her own ability to drive.
“We’ve got to make time,” suggested the pitcher nervously.
“I can do it,” the girl assured him, and, once she had thrown in the third gear, the pitcher had no reason to complain of lack of speed.
Miss Morton’s girl friend—Miss Hazel Dunning—was taken aboard and then, with Bill sitting on the floor in front, and resting his feet on the mud-guard step, for the machine was only a runabout, the trip to Westfield was begun.
Back on the school diamond there was an anxious throng of students and players. The news of Bill’s kidnapping was known all over, and while there was despair in the ranks of the Westfield Freshmen and their supporters, there was ill-concealed joy among the Tuckerton nine and their adherents.
“Those fellows know where Bill is,” declared Cap.