“All the more reason for taking a big brace, old boy!” exclaimed Joe, giving him a hearty slap on the shoulder. “Try to throw off your troubles and work your head off for the success of the team.”
“I’ll do it,” promised Jim, as he shook his chum’s hand to bind the bargain.
“Good,” said Joe, heartily. “And promise me one thing, Jim. Don’t hint at anything of this in your letters to Clara. Nothing can really be explained in a letter. Nothing in the world has caused so much estrangement, so much heartache, as trying to arrange a misunderstanding by letter. You can’t say just what you want, and what you do say is never understood just in the way you want it to be. Wait until you can see Clara face to face, and I’ll bet the whole thing will be cleared up in five minutes.”
“But that will be at the end of the season!” exclaimed Jim, in dismay.
“Not so long as that, I guess,” said Joe. “I’m going to see if I can’t by some means get Clara to make a flying visit to New York.” He paused a moment, and his brow clouded with anxiety. Then he resumed: “Of course she can’t do it right now because my mother is in too critical a condition. But if the operation turns out all right and she has a good recovery, it might be managed. If not, I have something else in mind that I’ll talk to you about later.”
To Joe’s already overburdened mind was added another worry in the game with the Bostons the next afternoon.
Jackwell and Bowen, while they had been affected by the general slump of the team, had given no evidence of a return of the peculiar nervousness that had marked their actions earlier in the season. But Joe noticed on that afternoon, the frequent looks at the stand and the pulling of their caps over their faces for which he had before taken them to task.
Merton was pitching, and Joe was playing in left. In the fourth inning, an easy fly came out to Bowen and he made a miserable muff. Jackwell also made a couple of errors at third. In each case the blunders were costly, as they let in runs.
“What made you drop that fly, Bowen?” Joe asked, as the Giants came in from the field.
“I lost it in the sun,” replied Bowen. “At this time in the year the sun comes over the grandstand in such a way that it’s right in my eyes.”