“All right Miss Mabel. I’ll do anything you say. Wow! That was a pretty hit all right. Go it, old man! A three-bagger!” and in the enthusiasm over the game the Yale man dropped Joe as a topic of conversation.
Our hero, with burning cheeks, got up and strolled away. He had heard too much, but he was glad they did not know he had unintentionally been listening.
The game ended with the Silver Stars winners, but the score was not as close as seemed likely in the seventh inning. For the Resolutes, most unexpectedly, began hitting Joe, though he managed to pull himself together in the ninth, and retired his opponents hitless. The last half of the ninth was not played, as the home team had a margin of two runs.
“Well, we did ’em,” remarked Tom, as he and Joe walked off the field. “But they sort of pulled up on us. Did they get on to your curves?”
“No,” spoke Joe listlessly. “I—er—I got a little tired I guess.”
“No wonder. You’re not in trim. But you stiffened up at the last.”
“Oh, yes,” but Joe knew it was not weariness that accounted for his being hit so often. It was because of an inward rage, a sense of shame, and, be it confessed, a bit of fear.
For well he knew how little it would take, in such a college as Yale, to make or mar a man. Should he come, heralded perhaps by the unfriendly tongue of the lad who had watched him pitch that day—heralded as one with a “swelled head”—as one who thought himself a master-pitcher—Joe knew he could never live it down.
“I’ll never get my chance—the chance for the ’varsity—if he begins to talk,” mused Joe, and for a time he was miserable.
“Come on over to grub,” invited Tom. “Sis and her latest find will be there—that Yale chap. Maybe you’d like to meet him. If you don’t we can sneak in late and there’ll be some eats left.”