“Well,” said Payson on the way to the gymnasium, “you finally discovered him, eh, Durfee?”
“Yes, sir, finally,” answered the Yardley captain somewhat sheepishly.
“Yes, he had been stealing six or eight inches on you every delivery,” said Payson. “I might have told you, but I wanted you to learn to keep your eyes open and find such things out for yourself. It nearly cost us the game, I guess, but the lesson would have been worth even that. Baseball, Durfee, isn’t all physical skill. It’s like almost everything else; there’s a chance to use your head in it!”
[CHAPTER XVIII]
THE GREAT TEMPTATION
I have said that all Yardley was out of doors save those who feared the rigors of the final examinations. I had for the moment forgotten Harry Merrow. Harry was not bothering his young head much about the finals. He managed to just scrape through from day to day without getting into serious difficulties with the Office, and that was about as far as his ambition went in that direction. All he asked was to be allowed to study as little as possible, and devote his days to his stamps. And so, if he wasn’t cramming hard for the final examinations, haunting the library, or burning the midnight oil, neither was he to be found on track or diamond, links or river. Harry had some very decided views on the subject of fellows who wasted life’s golden moments in chasing baseballs, digging up perfectly good cinder track with spikes, or hitting a rubber ball, hard or soft, over net or links. A championship game on the diamond or gridiron always commanded Harry’s presence, but I fear he appeared at such affairs more from a sense of duty than from any thought of pleasure to be derived from them. Time had been when he liked tennis and was a close follower of class baseball affairs, while his enthusiasm for canoeing had once come very near to resulting in a tragedy, with Harry in the principal rôle. On that occasion Gerald and Arthur had fished him out of the pond in Meeker’s Marsh far more dead than alive. But nowadays all the fresh air he demanded he could get through the open windows of his room, while as for exercise, turning the pages of his big stamp albums or mounting new additions to his fast growing collection was quite sufficient for his requirements. If any boy was ever obsessed by a mania, that boy was Harry Merrow; and his mania was stamps.
And so the invitation from Mr. Charles Cotton, of Broadwood, to exchange duplicates didn’t go unanswered. Harry wrote a letter in reply, and a correspondence covering a week resulted. Then a meeting was arranged at Wallace’s drug store, in Greenburg, and one afternoon Harry tramped off down the hill with his pockets full of little Manilla envelopes containing his duplicate treasures.
Cotton was awaiting him at one of the little tables, his valuables beside him, and the end of a straw in his mouth. The straw connected with a tall glass of lemonade. Harry made himself known, accepted the Broadwood youth’s proffer of a soda—the weather was decidedly warm for the time of year—and looked his new acquaintance over.
Cotton was a tall, lank, ungainly, and unhealthy-looking boy of fifteen or thereabouts. His clothes didn’t fit him, and his vivid red necktie was riding over the top of his collar at the back. His face was probably quite clean, but it didn’t look so, and his eyes were very pale hazel and seemed inflamed. On the whole, Harry was not favorably impressed, and for a moment he regretted the necessity of being seen in company with such an unprepossessing chap. But he remembered the next instant that Cotton was a fellow stamp collector, and that bond of sympathy was sufficient to make Harry charitable.