“Your hair, son. How did you get it that way?”
“It’s always been red,” answered the smaller youth, unoffended, but dropping his steady gaze a moment while he dug in the dirt in front of the bench with one scuffed shoe.
“You can’t beat Nature, can you?” sighed Babe.
The boy looked doubtful, but after a moment of hesitation gave a nod of agreement. Three or four other members of the team came around the corner of the stand, followed by the coach, Gus Cousins, and, subsequently, by Cicero Brutus Robinson, pushing a wheelbarrow containing base sacks, bat bag, protector, mask and the daily paraphernalia of practice. Cicero, who was extremely black, very squat and interestingly bandy-legged, deposited his vehicle at the end of the bench and, wiping his glittering ebony forehead with the sleeve of a faded blue shirt, lifted the base sacks from the wheelbarrow and ambled leisurely away with them. A smallish, attenuated boy who had entered on Cicero’s heels, dragged the bat bag forth and unstrapped it. More players arrived, accompanied by a studious looking senior in street attire who clutched a large score-book in one hand and a box of balls in the other. Babe Linder gave greetings to the newcomers and, thudding the big mitten approvingly, even affectionately, moved along the bench. Unnoted by him, the red-haired youth kept close beside him. Babe selected a discolored baseball from among the dozen in the bottom of a fiber bucket and—
“Say!”
Babe looked down. “Son,” he asked gently, “do I owe you money, or what?”
“No, sir.” Two deep blue eyes looked appealingly up from a tanned and freckled face. “Say, do you want a bat boy?”
“A bat boy? No. I couldn’t use one.”
“I mean the team, sir.”
“Oh! Why, we’ve got one, son. That’s he over there.”