“Yes.”
“What a splendid thrower you must be!” There was admiration in her tones.
“It’s from playing ball,” explained Joe, modestly. “I’m a pitcher on the Pittston nine. We’re training over at Montville.”
“Oh,” she murmured, understandingly.
“If I could get you some water to drink, it would make you feel better,” said Joe. “Then I might patch up the broken harness and get you home. Do you live around here?”
“Yes, just outside of Goldsboro. Perhaps you could make a leaf answer for a cup,” she suggested. “I believe I would like a little water. It would do me good.”
She moistened her dry lips with her tongue as Joe hastened back to the little brook. He managed to curl an oak leaf into a rude but clean cup, and brought back a little water. The girl sipped it gratefully, and the effect was apparent at once. She was able to stand alone.
“Now to see if I can get that horse of yours hitched to the carriage,” spoke the young pitcher, “that is, if the carriage isn’t broken.”
“It’s awfully kind of you, Mr.——” she paused suggestively.
“I’m Joe Matson, formerly of Yale,” was our hero’s answer, and, somehow, he felt not a little proud of that “Yale.” After all, his university training, incomplete though it had been, was not to be despised.