“Pooh!” scoffed Tom. “If Gerald ever gets to be President you’ll try to show that it was because you gave him boxing lessons when he was a kid.”
But whether or not part of the credit was due to Alf, it remains a fact that Gerald was about the proudest and happiest youngster in the whole school, with only one thing to worry him. That thing was the fact that devotion to baseball was playing hob with his lessons. It was Kilts who first drew his attention to the fact. He asked him to remain behind the class one morning.
“What’s wrong, lad?” he asked kindly. Gerald hesitated a moment, trying to find a plausible excuse. In the end he decided that the truth would do better than anything else.
“It’s baseball, sir,” he answered frankly. “I’m on my class team, and—and I guess I haven’t been studying very hard.”
“Well, well, that won’t do,” said Kilts gravely. “Baseball is a fine game, I have no doubt, but you mustn’t let it come between you and your studies, lad. Better let baseball alone a while, I’m thinking, until you can do better work than you’ve been doing the last week. Baseball and all such sports belong outdoors; they’re well enough there; but when you take them into class with you—” Kilts shook his head soberly—“you’re brewing trouble. You know I’m right, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” Gerald answered. “I’ll try and—and do better.”
“That’s the lad! Youth must have its pleasures, but there’s work to do, too. Ye ken what Bobby Burns said?
“‘O man! while in thy early years,
How prodigal of time!
Misspending all thy precious hours,
Thy glorious youthful prime!’
“He was no the hard worker himself, was Bobby,” added Mr. McIntyre with a chuckle, “but he sensed it right, I’m thinking. Well, run along, lad, and remember, I’m looking for better things from you.”
So Gerald ran along, just as the next class began crowding into the little recitation room, and when study time came that evening, instead of leaning over his books with one hand in a fielder’s glove, as had been his custom of late, he put glove and ball out of sight behind a pillow on the window seat before he sat down. Dan saw, and breathed easier.