“Go to it, old man!” exclaimed Tom enthusiastically. “I wish I had your hopes. Well, I suppose I’ll soon be grinding away with the old crowd at Excelsior, and you—you’ll be at—Yale!”
“Probably,” admitted Joe, with something of a sigh. “I almost wish I was going back to the old school. We had good times there!”
“We sure did. But I’ve got to leave you now. I promised Sis I’d go to the store for her. See you later,” and Tom clasped his chum’s hand.
“That reminds me,” spoke Joe. “I’ve got to go back home, hitch up the horse, and take some patterns over to Birchville for dad.”
“Wish I could go along, but I can’t,” said Tom. “It’s a fine day for a drive. Come on over to-night.”
“Maybe I will—so long,” and the two friends parted to go their ways, one to dream over the good fortune of the other—to envy him—while Joe himself—Baseball Joe as his friends called him—thought rather regretfully of the time he must lose at college when, if he had been allowed his own way, he would have sought admission to some minor baseball league, to work himself up to a major position.
“But as long as the folks want me to have a college course I’ll take it—and do my best,” he mused.
A little later, behind the old family horse, he was jogging over the country road in the direction of a distant town, where his father, an inventor, and one of the owners of the Royal Harvester Works, had been in the habit of sending his patterns from which to have models made.