"Thank you," he said. "We are ready to start the game any time now." He watched a black-garbed man walk past, muttering to himself as if he were rehearsing some speech. "And don't be too sure," he flung over his shoulder at the Belden captain, "that you are going to win that championship, either. You have to beat us first."
CHAPTER XXV
SUBSTITUTES' DAY
A gong clanged. The umpire brushed off home plate with his little whisk broom. When he turned to face the stands, the fans stilled expectantly.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he announced, "the batteries for to-day's game are: for Lakeville, Payton and Jones; for Belden, Bonner and Clark."
Substitute No. 1
Out in center field, Nap Meeker looked up at the blue sky and said, very solemnly, "This is my lucky day." More than one hundred years before, history has it, the little Corsican for whom Nap was nicknamed went forth to battle with these same words on his lips. To both boy and soldier, perhaps, they marked the summoning of courage for what was to come.
For Nap dreaded the impending game. He had little skill as a player, and none knew it better than himself. This afternoon, for example, he would much have preferred to bury his nose in some unread biography of Napoleon, and live for an hour or more in those stirring times when ambition and accomplishment vaulted straight to a throne.