“Not a bit,” she said demurely, her dimples coming and going in a way that drove him nearly distracted. “I really feel as though I ought to salaam or kow-tow or whatever it is the Orientals do when they come before the Emperor. But, oh, Joe,” and here she dropped her bantering manner and leaned forward earnestly, “you were simply magnificent this afternoon. The way you kept your nerve and won that game was just wonderful. I was so excited at times that I thought my heart would leap out of my body. I was proud, oh, so proud that you were a friend of mine!”
Joe had heard many words of praise that day but none half so sweet as these.
“Will you let me tell you a secret?” he exclaimed, half rising from his chair. “Do you want to know who really won that game?”
“Why, you did,” she returned in some surprise. “Of course the rest of the team did, too, but if it hadn’t been for your pitching and batting——”
“No,” he interrupted, “it was you who won the game.”
He had risen now and had come swiftly to her side.
“Listen, Mabel,” he said, and before the note in his voice she felt her pulses leap. “You were in my mind from the start to the finish of that game. I looked up at you every time I went into the box. This little glove of yours”—he took it from his pocket with a hand that trembled—“lay close to my heart all through the game. Mabel——”
“Why, hello, Joe, old top!” came a voice from the door that had opened without their hearing it. “What good wind blew you here? I’m no end glad to see you, don’t you know. Congratulations, old man, on winning that game. You were simply rippin’, don’t you know.”
And Reggie Varley ambled in and shook Joe’s hand warmly, blandly unconscious of the lack of welcome from the two inmates of the room.