Tom nodded.
“Easily, I guess. But I’m sorry you’re tied up, Gerald.”
Then Alf came in and the conversation turned to baseball until Gerald left for his room.
With the advent of May, warm weather came to Wissining. The track dried out and regained its springiness, and the turf grew greener every day. Save for a few unfortunates who, being doubtful of passing their finals next month, lolled at the open windows of an afternoon, and with books in hands looked longingly out into the spring world, all Yardley was on field or river. Canoes dotted the blue water; from the diamond came the cries of the players and the sound of ball against bat; the tennis courts were all occupied; on the links figures tramped sturdily to and fro; around the cinder track white-clad youths jogged or raced; at the end of the big green oval lithe bodies tore along the paths, and hurled themselves across yards of newly spaded brown loam, or leaped in sudden flight over the bars. Mingled with all the other sounds was the strident chatter of the mower cropping the new grass.
The Baseball Team had played three contests so far and won each, but in spite of that Durfee was worried. Yardley’s weakness lay in the pitching department, for she had no one who could begin to fill the place left vacant with the graduation in June last of Colton. Reid, last season’s substitute, was doing the best he knew how, but so far had been hit pretty freely by even the least dangerous of Yardley’s opponents. Servis, who was running Reid a fairly close race, lacked experience. Alf was playing his old position in left field, and Dan was holding down second base. Besides the Varsity team there were four class nines practicing, and to a stranger it would have seemed that instead of a preparatory school to fit boys for college, Yardley was in reality a baseball kindergarten.
Yardley’s fourth game, that with Porter Institute, came on Saturday. Porter wasn’t usually a very formidable antagonist, but this year reports had been reaching Yardley to the effect that Porter’s new pitcher, one Holmes, was a marvel, and that so far none of the teams that had met Porter had been able to do anything with his delivery. Holmes had appeared at Porter last autumn, and had entered the Third Class. Where he had come from no one at Yardley knew, but rumor had it that he was about eighteen years of age, and had been pitching on baseball teams for several years.
“I never heard of him in my life,” said Durfee the day of the game, “and I guess he will prove to be just about like all the other wonders you hear of—all right on paper but nothing much on the diamond. It doesn’t make much difference, of course, whether we win from Porter or lose to her, only—well, when I hear about these marvelous pitchers I always want to take a fall out of them! I guess we can manage to find him for a few safe ones before the game is over.”
“If he really is a wonder,” said Alf, “I vote we kidnap him. What we need most is a good slab artist, and we oughtn’t to let a chance get by us. If he’s any good, we’ll steal him after the game.”
“Good scheme,” Dan laughed, “but how are you going to do it?”
“Oh, that’s easy. We’ll take him up to the top of Oxford to show him the view, and then shut him up in Cambridge. We can take his meals up to him, you know; he needn’t starve. All we want to do is to keep him for the Broadwood game.”