“At that, they got more out of it than you did,” returned Jim, in the same modulated voice. “Your face has the smoothness of a babe, as it were.”
“Yes, but you ought to feel the back of my head,” said Joe ruefully. “I’ve got a bump there the size of a hen’s egg.”
“That’s probably where you hit the floor,” said Jim, and then it was necessary to discontinue the sub rosa conversation, as they had come within earshot of the two players.
If Joe was curious as to just the manner in which his erstwhile assailants meant to greet him, he was not long kept in doubt.
As his glance crossed that of Reddy Hupft the latter merely scowled faintly and looked away, shouting something to Larry, who had just come up.
“Snubbed, by Jiminy!” murmured Joe, and Jim replied with a grin as he turned and loped off toward the pitcher’s box.
Later, when Joe and McCarney came face to face, the experience was repeated, only that there was a little more ferocity in the latter’s stony glance.
“That fellow McCarney surely does hate me like poison,” Joe communed, as he played with the ball in practice, sending little teasers over the plate that kept the unfortunate batters in a state somewhere between apoplexy and nervous prostration. “I’d like to meet him again some time when the odds aren’t two to one.”
It was hard for him to make up his mind in the hour or two that followed whether to tell McRae of his experience or whether to let the matter go by, for the time at least.
One minute he was not sure but what it was McRae’s right to know the story and the next moment he was telling himself that, since he had really learned nothing from the overheard conversation between McCarney and Hupft, there was no vital reason why he should say anything about it.