"Indeed!" remarked Mr. Sefton, without any great show of enthusiasm.
"But I am digressing," the great one stated. "I came here to warn you gentlemen that if, on the stroke of three o'clock, the Lakeville team is still missing, I shall instruct the umpire to forfeit the game by the usual score of nine to nothing. Immediately, I shall award the pennant to Belden and begin—ahem, my speech. I thank you, gentlemen."
"For what?" gasped Mr. Sefton, watching the man push his way to the bottom of the stand. "Look here, Horace, they can't do that, can they?"
Mr. Hibbs shook a worried head. "I don't know," he confessed. "In golf or tennis, of course, if a player does not report, he forfeits his contest. And there is a baseball rule to the effect that if a team refuses to play—"
A boy stalked along the ground at the foot of the bleachers. He was waving a paper and shouting: "Horace Hibbs! Message for Horace Hibbs! Horace Hibbs! Message for—"
"Up here, boy!" Molly sprang to her feet, waving wildly. "Right up here!—Let him pass, please! Thank you!—This is Mr. Hibbs—Quick! What is it?"
With nervous haste, Horace Hibbs unfolded the paper. The message was scrawled in a free, running hand, with several erasures, as if it had been taken over a telephone. He read it to the other two:
Tell Horace Hibbs, Belden High School baseball park, that Lakeville team has been delayed by bad freight wreck on railroad ahead. May be very late in arriving. Hold game.—Leland.
"Oh!" gasped Molly. It was as if somebody had struck her a stinging blow on the cheek. She felt the pain, the mental despair, and then, as the numbness passed, a tingling anger and unreasoning spleen against the world in general. "Oh!" she said again, crimsoning. "They are in trouble. It isn't fair. Why don't you men do something? Dad, how can you sit quietly when the boys need help?"