“Harry says he will not let you play on the teams at Cascade,” she replied quickly. “He says the fellows do not like you and will not play if you do.”
“I wasn’t very popular last year,” said Larry, laughing to conceal his embarrassment. “You see I didn’t know them and thought they did not treat me well. I hope it will be better this year.”
In a few moments their embarrassment passed, and the boy and girl chattered away merrily. Larry told of his boy life back in the East, of the death of his parents and Major Lawrence’s kindness in taking him as his own son; of his trip West, and of his meeting with the Giants and Krag the pitcher. Helen Baldwin was sympathetic.
“I can understand,” she said. “My father and mother are poor and we are a large family, so it was hard for papa to give us all he would have liked to. Uncle Barney offered to take me and educate me, so I am much in the same situation that you are—only when Uncle Barney goes East, he takes me, and I visit with my parents, and next summer he is going to bring Bertha, my younger sister, to the ranch as company for me, as Harry and Bob and I do not play well together.”
By bedtime they were fast friends. The feud of the Lawrence and Baldwin families seemed buried so far as they were concerned. And the following morning, when they arrived, Larry Kirkland carried the girl’s baggage to the wagonette that was to take her to St. Gertrude’s and promised that he would call on Thursdays when the girls were allowed visitors.
As the wagonette turned up the avenue he seized his own neglected baggage and springing into a carriage, started for Cascade campus, filled with a new determination to win his C.
CHAPTER VII
A Lesson in Obedience
Cascade College baseball team was out for the fall practice. Only a few recruits, fellows who had been barred by their studies or by conditions during the regular season, were out with the veterans who, proudly wearing their C’s were tossing balls around the long vacant field. The team had been a failure in its important games, and Coach Haxton, chafing under criticism of the upper classmen and the dearth of interest throughout the college, had decreed that the team must work during the fall until the football men occupied the stage, and he had threatened angrily to replace several of the veterans of the team with youngsters. Yet there had not been a call for recruits to strengthen the team.
It was not customary at Cascade to call baseball volunteers in the fall term, but to issue calls late in the winter term and at the opening of the spring. The games played in the fall were not of importance from a college standpoint. The “big” games against Golden University and St. Mary’s—those that counted in the standing of the rival schools—were playing in the spring. But during the fall and early winter—when the genial climate permitted playing, games were scheduled against the strong teams of the nearby cities, games which tested the ability of the players even more than did those of the championship season; as their opponents usually were the best of the independent amateurs.
It was onto this scene of half-hearted activity that Larry Kirkland came on the crisp, perfect afternoon, followed by Katsura, Winans and Big Trumbull, the heavy-hitting giant who had sided with Larry during his troubles of the preceding spring. The arrival of the quartette on the playing field created something of a sensation among the veterans, who stopped their listless practice and watched them wonderingly. Those close together exchanged puzzled questions as to the meaning of the sudden descent of the leaders of the opposition of the preceding term. Behind the quartette sauntered “Paw” Lattiser, an open book in one hand, a straw hat absent-mindedly held in his mouth. He was bareheaded as usual, and appeared to pay no attention either to the new recruits or to the regulars, who were practicing.