“Oh, I’m so glad!” cried Clara.
“Now it’s your turn to be quiet and listen,” admonished Joe, with a smile at his sister.
“I have about finished,” went on their mother. “The judge decided in your father’s favor, and he doesn’t even have to share the profits of the invention with the harvester company or with Mr. Rufus Holdney, as he at one time thought he would, for they have violated their contract. So we won’t be poor, after all, children. Aren’t you glad?”
“You bet!” exploded Joe, throwing his arms around his mother’s neck.
“And we won’t have to leave this nice house,” added Clara, looking around the comfortable abode.
“Then I can go to boarding school—and pitch on the school nine; can’t I mother?” cried Joe, throwing his arms around her.
“Oh, yes; I suppose so,” she answered, with half a sigh. “But I do wish you’d do something else besides play baseball.”
“Something else besides baseball, mother! Why, there’s nothing to be compared to it. Hurray! I’m going to boarding school! I’m going to boarding school!” and Joe, catching Clara around the waist, waltzed her around the room. Then he caught his mother on his other arm—the arm that won the victory for the Stars that day—and her, too, he whirled about until she cried for mercy.
“Oh, but this is great!” Joe cried when he stopped for breath. “Simply great! I must go and tell Tom. Maybe he can go to boarding school with me.”
And whether Tom did or not, and what were our hero’s further fortunes on the diamond, will be related in the next volume, to be called: “Baseball Joe on the School Nine; or, Pitching for the Blue Banner.”