“Yes,” said Joe, “they’re nifty players when it comes to fielding and they’re fleet as jack rabbits on the bases—but they’re a little light at the 57 bat. When it comes to playing before their home crowds they’ll be a pretty stiff proposition.”
“Do you take in China at all?” asked Reggie.
“We’ll probably stop at Shanghai and Hongkong,” replied Joe. “I don’t imagine the Chinks can scrape up any kind of a baseball team, but there are big foreign colonies at both of those places and they’ll turn out in force to see players from the States. Then after touching at Manila, we’ll go to Australia, taking in all the big towns like Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. While of course the Australians are crazy about cricket, like all Englishmen, they’re keen for every kind of athletic sport, and we’re sure of big crowds there. After that we sail for Ceylon and from there to Egypt.”
“I’d like to see Egypt better than any other place,” broke in Clara. “I’ve always been crazy to go there.”
“It’s full of curiosities,” remarked Jim. “There’s the Sphinx, for instance—a woman who hasn’t said a word for five thousand years.”
Clara flashed a withering glance at him, under which he wilted.
“Don’t mix your Greek fable and your Egyptian facts, Jim,” chuckled Joe.
“Huh?”
“Fact. Since this trip’s been in the wind, I’ve been reading up. Those Egyptian sphinxes—those 58 that haven’t a ram’s or a hawk’s head—have a man’s, not a woman’s, head.”
“That’s why they’ve been able to keep still so long, then!” exclaimed Jim.