Alice flushed, a little angrily, perhaps, for she did not like Burton, although he was her cousin and was said to be a suitor for her favor.
"A SCRUB GAME."
Notwithstanding the gloom of the morning, the day came off bright and fine, and by the time the train was due from the West, bringing the Jonesville boys, the weather was perfect. A serene October sky bent over Catalpa, and the bright river flowed rippling toward the Mississippi, its banks red and yellow with autumnal foliage. Crossing the bridge from North Catalpa and from the farming settlements to the north were strings of buggies, lumber-wagons and other vehicles; and not a few sight-seers jogged along on horseback, all with their faces set toward the Agricultural Fair Grounds, just above the town and lying to the southward. Catalpa is built on a slope that descends from the rolling prairie to the bank of Stone River. Once out of the town, one reaches a lovely stretch of undulating ground skirted by a dead level plain, admirably adapted for a base ball field. The original use of the Fair Grounds had almost been forgotten when the ball clubs of Catalpa began to practice within the enclosure. The Northern District fair had gone farther North, and the grounds were left to chance comers—a travelling circus, or an occasional amateur racing match.
To-day, the blue and white flag of the Catalpas floated proudly from what had once been the Judges' stand, while the pale green colors of the Jonesvillians hung lazily from a staff driven into the ground to the westward of the track. For more than an hour before the time set for the calling of the game, a steady stream of people poured into the enclosure. The battered and rickety seats had been patched up to bear the weight of those who were willing to pay the small fee exacted for the privilege; but the mass of the spectators were grouped together in the open spaces to the westward and southward of these, and farther around the ring was a thin line of vehicles of various descriptions. Men and women on horseback, young girls crowded into wagon-boxes, and boys ramping around on scrubby mustangs, filled up the background.
It was a pretty sight. And while the crowd waited for the hour to arrive, much scientific base ball gossip drifted about the enclosure. Village lads who had worked hard or had teased with uncommon assiduity to secure the "two bits" needed to gain admission to the grounds, chaffed each other vociferously and exchanged learned comments on the playing and the qualities of the combatants.
"Oh you should have seen John Brubaker play right field that day when the Catalpas sent the Jonesvillers home with a big headache," said one of these small critics, as he viewed with admiration Brubaker's stalwart form reclining at ease in the shade of the judges' stand. "Why he just everlastingly got away with the ball every time one of the Jonesvillers gave him one. Then there was Lew Morris, there's no player in the Jonesvillers, 'cept it is Larry Boyne, that can catch a ball like Lew, and why the Catalpas keep him in the left field, I don't know."
"Oh you talk too much with your mouth, you, Bill, you," cried a bigger base ball connoisseur. "What do you know about the game? Why, I saw the Jonesvillians, three years ago, when they first played the old Catalpas, I mean the soldier boys. That was playing, now I tell you. Hurrah! There comes the Nine!"