Clara paused for a moment. She realized that Joe had not answered her question as she would have liked.
"But I guess he's thinking of the change he may have to make," the sister argued. "Joe is a fine fellow. He certainly has gone ahead in baseball faster than he would have done in some other line of endeavor. Well, it's good he likes it.
"And yet," she mused, as she went to her room, "I wonder what it is that is worrying him?"
If she could have seen Joe, at that same moment, sitting on the edge of a chair in his apartment, moodily staring at the wall, she would have wondered more.
"What was his game?" thought Joe, as he recalled the scene with the man at the hotel. "What was his object?"
But he could not answer his own question.
Joe's sleep was disturbed the remainder of that night—short as the remainder was.
At breakfast table, the next morning, the story of the jolly sleigh ride was told to Mr. and Mrs. Matson. Of course Joe said nothing of the dispute with the surly man.
"And here's the pin they gave me," finished the young player as he passed around the emblem that had been so unexpectedly presented to him.
His mother was looking at it when the doorbell rang, and the maid, who answered it, brought back a telegram.