Double Play: A Story of School and Baseball

by Ralph Henry Barbour

Dan smiled as he closed the Office door behind him.

“It pays to be a millionaire,” he thought. “I rather wish, though, for Gerald’s sake, that his father wasn’t coming along. The sooner the fellows forget that Gerald’s John T’s son the better it’s going to be for Gerald.”

He rescued his bag and made his way to Clarke Hall where he climbed two flights of well-worn stairs and let himself into a corner room on the front of the building. There he sat down his bag, threw off his hat and coat and, crossing to the windows, sent them screeching upward. The sun had passed from the front of the building but a thin shaft of amber light entered the side window and fell upon the bare top of the chiffonier nearby. Dan thrust his hands into his pockets and looked about him. Then he shook his head.

“It’s going to be funny here at first without Tubby,” he muttered. “Tubby wasn’t what you’d call an ideal roommate, but I was sort of getting used to him. I suppose a fellow misses even a boil if he has it long enough!”

Twenty-eight Clarke was a large room, well lighted and airy. It was comfortably if plainly furnished. Each side of the room held its bed, chiffonier, washstand and chair. An ingrain carpet covered most of the floor and the shallow bay window was fitted with a window-seat piled with cushions. In the center of the room stood a broad-topped study table and a comfortable arm-chair flanked it at either side. On the clean gray-tinted walls hung a few good pictures. There was a good-sized closet on each side of the door. Being in a corner room there was an end window as well as the bay in front.

Dan hung his gray overcoat and derby hat in the closet, swung his bag to the table and began to unpack it. And while he is engaged let us have a good look at him.

Dan Vinton was fifteen years of age, rather tall, lithe, and long of limb. He had a quickness and certainty of movement—exhibited even in the way in which he stowed his things away—that impressed the observer at once. Alertness was a prominent characteristic of Dan’s; he never shilly-shallied, nor, on the other hand, was he especially impulsive. He had the faculty of making up his mind quickly, and, his decision once reached, he acted promptly and with little loss of effort. Dan’s course between two points was always a straight line. All this may have had something to do with the fact that he played an extremely good game of football at the end of the line.

I don’t want to give the impression that Dan was one of the thin and nervous sort; on the contrary he was well-built, if a trifle large for his fifteen years, while his limbs were not all bone even if they were long. And nerves were things that never bothered him. He was good-looking, with steady brown eyes, a short, straight nose, brown hair, and a pleasant mouth which hinted of good temper. Dan had entered Yardley Hall School the preceding Fall and was in the Third Class. He had won a place for himself on the football eleven and had scored the winning touchdown in the final contest against Yardley’s rival, Broadwood Academy. One cannot ordinarily do a thing like that without becoming pretty well known in a school of some two hundred and seventy students or without gaining some degree of popularity, and Dan was no exception. He had received enough praise and adulation to have turned a less well-balanced head. To Dan the School’s homage had brought pleasure but not pride. He had many acquaintances but only a handful of friends. But the friends were worth having and the friendship was real.

Having emptied the bag he tossed it onto the closet shelf and wandered to the window, glancing at his watch on the way.

“Ten minutes to five,” he murmured. “That train ought to be in.” At that moment there was a shriek from a locomotive whistle and Dan threw open one of the front windows and craned his head and shoulders out. It was just possible to see the corner of the station, nearly a half-mile away, and there was the big engine puffing black smoke clouds from its diminutive stack. A moment later it had taken up its journey again and Dan watched it and the ten cars slip across the open track and plunge into the long cut through the school grounds below The Prospect. It would be ten minutes at least before the carriages would arrive, and Dan settled himself in his arm-chair and took up a book. But the arrival of his trunk from the station interrupted him a moment later, and after the porter had gone he decided to do his unpacking now and get it over with. The trunk was only a small one and didn’t keep him busy very long, but before he had finished the carriages had begun to unload their noisy passengers at the front of Oxford Hall and Dan decided to finish his task before seeking his friends. So it was nearly a quarter of an hour later that he set his cap onto the back of his head and ran down the stairs. The station carriages were making their second trips and the front of Oxford was sprinkled with fellows. Dan returned salutations here and there without stopping as he cut around the corner of Clarke and made his way to Dudley.