"Thanks to me?"
"Yes; it has been out of order ever since you used it last. Baseball practice doesn't give me much time to work on it by daylight, and so I'm trying to get her running now."
"Take my advice and pay somebody to remove the thing. It's the biggest old lemon I ever saw. All it's worth is its price as junk. Gee! I'm feeling rotten." He sat down on a box, coughing again.
Indeed Herbert did not look well, and there seemed to be something of an alarming nature in the sound of his cough. His thin cheeks were flushed and feverish.
"You don't have to worry yourself about it," returned Roy warmly. "It's mine, and I presume I can do anything I please with it."
"Awful touchy to-night," muttered Rackliff. He lighted a cigarette, but the first whiff threw him into a most distressing fit of coughing and he flung it out through the open door. "Can't seem to get anything out of a smoke," he complained. "Cigarettes don't taste good, and they raise the merry dickens with this old cough of mine. I've got a beastly headache, and I suppose I ought to be in bed, but I've got to go down to the postoffice. Expect a letter from Newbert to-night."
"So you're corresponding with him, are you?" said Roy, wiping his greasy hands on some cotton waste.
"Sure. Why not? We were chums, you know."
"And of course you still think him the greatest pitcher that ever happened?"
"He's just about the greatest in his class; you'll find that out Saturday. Watch how he shows Cowboy Grant up. Say, Springer rather showed that fellow up, too, didn't he?"