“Gee, that’s great!” exclaimed Larry enthusiastically. “You must live at the bungalow?”
“Yes, the Major insisted that I take a room there. He said he was so lonely with you gone that he couldn’t find any one even to have a satisfactory quarrel with. He gets mad at me because I won’t get mad at him, and we have some magnificent quarrels.”
“He likes to have any one contradict him, so that he can pretend to get mad,” laughed Larry. “The only thing that makes him really angry is for someone to agree with him all the time. He’s the grandest, finest man in the world, and I never can repay him for his kindness to me.”
“Nor I,” said Krag seriously. “He saved me from becoming a day-laborer—or worse—and I thank you for your part in it.”
“My part? I hadn’t any part. Besides I think Uncle Jim guessed pretty shrewdly that you’d make the best kind of a man to run the ranch for him. All I’m afraid of is that you’ll be too busy to teach me any baseball.”
“By the way,” said Krag quickly. “I’ve been so busy gossiping about myself, I forgot to ask if you made the team?”
The wagon, rolling along at a rapid gait, was nearing the crest of the last billow of ground, and ahead, over the tops of the orchards, they could see the gables of Shasta View. Towering high in the background rose the mountains, and at that moment the fog wreath was wind-torn from the brow of Shasta, revealing the cone in its steely whiteness.
“It seems home now,” said Larry, pointing away across the valley. “I never shall forget how it seemed the first morning I came, walking, homesick, scared and tired, carrying the uniform you gave me and wondering what kind of a reception I would get.”
“Stick to the subject,” said Krag quickly, observing that Larry was striving to turn the conversation into other channels. “Did you make the team?”
“I didn’t play any baseball,” said Larry reluctantly, “I didn’t even try for the team.”