“I said to myself,” Krag continued, unheeding the remark, “I said, ‘he has the swelled head.’ I hoped it wasn’t true.”
“It wasn’t true,” said Larry flashing into anger. “You know I’m not that kind. I wasn’t trying to run the team, or anything of that sort.”
“No,” replied Krag, still unmoved. “You didn’t ask them to make you captain, you just walked out and condescended to show them a few things about the game. You didn’t put on a uniform and get out and work; you loafed around waiting for them to beg you to help out the team.”
“It isn’t true. You know it isn’t true,” stormed Larry, although he stirred uncomfortably, realizing that Krag was hitting nearer the truth than was comfortable.
“I know you don’t think it is true, Larry,” said the big pitcher kindly. “You don’t know. I believe you dislike that kind of a fellow almost as much as I do—and I’ve been with them for years. I ought to know the symptoms. I hoped you’d escape it, that’s what made me so anxious to see your name in the paper.” Larry maintained a sulky, aggrieved silence.
“The trouble with you, Larry,” said Krag after a long pause, during which he lighted his pipe afresh, “is plain, untrimmed, swelled head.”
“Yes it is,” he said sharply when Larry started to expostulate—“plain, unvarnished, swelled head. I’ve seen too many kids ruined by that disease not to know it—and too many to permit me to keep quiet and let you go wrong from it.
“You went to college thinking you were the big recruit to the baseball ranks. It was natural. You had been the whole thing here on the ranch, boss of everything and used to being obeyed. You were the best player in that little prep school, and bossed the whole works and showed them how the game should be played. Then when you went down to Cascade your feelings were hurt because you weren’t asked to run the team.”
Larry maintained an angry, sullen silence. He was boiling with resentment, outraged, scandalized and shocked at the brutal accusations hurled at him and heaped upon him by the man he had made an idol for years.
“You did feel a little hurt because no one paid much attention to you, didn’t you?”