[CHAPTER XXV]
FIGHTING FOR THE LEAD
Joe chuckled to himself the next day, as he read the highly-colored stories in the papers bearing on the happening at the Park. The leopard had escaped while it was being transferred from one cage to another, and had afterward been found dead with a broken neck in a side path of the Park. There was a good deal of speculation as to how it had been killed, but apart from the fact that it had been due to a blow nothing was positively known. It was confidently predicted, however, that the whole truth would be uncovered in a day or two.
“Not unless I talk in my sleep, it won’t,” decided Joe.
He had no liking for notoriety, but it was chiefly on Mabel’s account that he kept silent. He knew how deeply she would dread having her name appear in print. She was one of those who believed that a woman’s name should appear in the papers only three times—when she was born, when she married and when she died. And Joe agreed with her. It was astonishing how he was growing to agree with her on everything.
The week of Mabel’s stay passed all too quickly. Joe grudged every hour of it. They went about everywhere when his duties permitted, and he had the satisfaction of winning a game under her approving eyes. When at last he saw her on the train for Goldsboro, she had promised to come to New York to see the wind-up of the season at the Polo Grounds.
“I’m looking for you to win the pennant and get into the World’s Series,” she said at parting. “You won’t disappoint me, will you?”
“We’ve simply got to win it,” he replied. “I need that World’s Series money badly. Why if I had that I could——”
But Reggie blundered along just then, and Joe could not tell what he wanted to do with the money. But perhaps Mabel guessed.
The baseball campaign was waxing hotter and hotter. The teams were so close together that, as they say of racing horses, “one blanket would have covered them.” So far, it was anybody’s race. In the East, Brooklyn was making a great spurt and had drawn up close to the front. Chicago was showing the way to the Western teams, but St. Louis was crowding close at her heels. It was a ding-dong, slam-bang race, with first one and then the other showing in front, and the whole baseball public was in a state of feverish excitement. Great crowds gathered around the bulletin boards in every large city. All agreed that it was the most even race in years. Huge throngs filled the playing grounds and the game was on the topmost wave of prosperity.