"Let's match for it."
"What!" said the Butcher, fiercely, "Don't let me hear any more of that talk. You've got to grow up first."
The Big Man, thus rebuked, acquiesced meekly. The two strolled back to the campus in silence.
"Suppose we have a catch," said the Big Man, tentatively.
"All right," said the Butcher, smiling.
Intrenched behind a gigantic mit, the Big Man strove valorously to hold the difficult balls. After a long period of this mitigated pleasure they sat down to rest. Then Cap Kiefer's stocky figure appeared around the Dickinson, and the Butcher went off for a long, solemn consultation.
The Big Man, thus relieved of responsibility, felt terribly alone. He went to his room and took down volume two of The Count of Monte Cristo, and stretched out on the window-seat. Somehow the stupendous adventures failed to enthrall him. It was still throughout the house. He caught himself listening for the patter of Hickey's shoes above, dancing a breakdown, or the rumble of Egghead's laugh down the hall, or a voice calling, "Who can lend me a pair of suspenders?"
And the window was empty. It seemed so strange to look up from the printed page and find no one in the Woodhull opposite, shaving painfully at the window, or lolling like himself over a novel, all the time keeping an eye on the life below. He could not jeer at Two Inches Brown and Crazy Opdyke practising curves, nor assure them that the Dickinson nine would just fatten on those easy ones. No one halloed from house to house, no voice below drawled out:
"Oh, you Great Big Man! Stick your head out of the window!"