“Looks pretty bad, doesn’t it, Ruth?” asked Madge.
“Don’t talk,” said Ruth in a low voice, as she saw her brother’s team coming in. “I’m—I’m just praying for them, Madge.”
A ray of light came to Randall in this inning for, though Pete Backus struck out, Tom laid down a pretty two bagger and came home on what was intended as a sacrifice hit by Joe Jackson, only it was fumbled and Joe got to first. Then Jerry fanned and Dutch got out on an almost impossible foul that Stoddard grabbed, banging up against the grand stand to do it.
“One to five,” remarked Tom musingly, as he went to his box, for the ending of the fourth. “Well, we can’t be whitewashed, anyhow, but I guess it’s all up with us.”
It seemed so, for in that inning Boxer added two runs to her credit, even if again Tom did strike out Langridge. The score was 7 to 1 against Randall now. In the fifth inning Tom’s side gathered in one run, Phil making it on a sacrifice by Holly Cross, and Boxer further sweetened her score by another tally. In the beginning of the sixth Randall had the joy of seeing another single mark go up in her frame.
“We’ve got three runs,” Tom remarked to Phil, as he went to his box. “One more in each inning will look pretty, but it will hardly do the work,” and he spoke bitterly.
“Hard luck, old man, but maybe it will turn,” came from Phil.
But, alas for hopes! Many things happened in the last half of the sixth, and when they were done occurring there were four runs chalked up for Boxer. Tom rather lost control of himself, and had walked two men, while there was ragged field work to account for the rest of the disaster. And now the score stood 12 to 3 in favor of Boxer Hall. It seemed like a farce, and even Boxer Hall was tired of cheering herself. Tom saw the championship slipping away after all his hard work. Even Bricktop Molloy, usually cheerful in the face of heavy odds, did not smile, and Mr. Leighton looked gloomy.