“Well, I’ll see you to-morrow. Keep it to yourself, though. I don’t want my plans all spoiled by—by a lot of silly talk.”
“I’ll say you don’t! Good night, Nod.”
When he had reached the corner it began to dawn on Laurie that, as Elk had told him yesterday, he talked too much! “Got myself into a nice mess,” he thought ruefully. “Suppose I’ve got to go ahead and bluff it out with Bob now. Wonder what got into me. No—no discretion, that’s my trouble. I ain’t so well in my circumspection, I guess. Better see a doctor about it! Oh, well—”
The next morning Laurie and Kewpie took advantage of an empty period soon after breakfast and again sought the south side of the gymnasium building. To-day Kewpie sought to demonstrate an out-shoot. He was not very successful, although Laurie had to acknowledge that now and then the ball did deviate slightly from the straight line. Sometimes it deviated to such purpose that he couldn’t reach it at all, but Kewpie made no claims at such times. He said the ball slipped. In the end, Kewpie went back to his famous drop and managed to elicit faint applause from Laurie.
Laurie couldn’t get his heart into the business this morning. Despite his efforts to forget it, that idiotic boast to Bob Starling kept returning to his mind to bother him. Either he must confess to Bob that he hadn’t meant a word of what he had said or he must think up some scheme of, at least, pretending to seek aid for Miss Comfort. He liked Bob a whole lot and he valued Bob’s opinion of him, and he hated to confess that he had just let his tongue run away with him. On the other hand, there wasn’t a thing he could do that would be of any practical help to Miss Comfort. He would just have to bluff, he concluded: make believe that he was doing a lot of heavy thinking and finally just let the thing peter out. Quite unjustly Laurie experienced a feeling of mild distaste for Miss Comfort.
In the middle of the forenoon, Bob, meeting him in the corridor, would have stopped him, but Laurie pushed by with a great display of haste, briefly replying in the negative to Bob’s mysteriously whispered inquiry: “Anything new, Nod?” After that, not having yet decided on any sort of a scheme to present to the other, Laurie avoided Bob as though the latter had measles.
At practice in the baseball cage he gave so much thought to the matter of saving his face with Bob that he made very poor work of catching and batting. He was, in fact, so detached from what was going on that even Elk Thurston’s gibes fell on deaf ears. Mr. Mulford, the coach, got after him many times that afternoon.
When practice was over Laurie fairly dawdled about the showers and dressing-room, and it was nearly half-past five when he finally set out for the Widow Deane’s, making his way there by a roundabout route that took him nowhere in sight of the Coventry place. He expected to find Ned there before him, but the little shop was deserted save for a small child buying penny candy and Mrs. Deane, who was waiting on the customer. Polly, said Mrs. Deane, had gone to Mae Ferrand’s. Laurie disconsolately ordered a root-beer and, overcoming an inclination to sit on the counter, listened to Mrs. Deane’s unexciting budget of news. He was not very attentive, although Mrs. Deane never suspected the fact, and she might have shown some surprise when he broke into her account of Polly’s concern over Antoinette, the rabbit who lived in a box in the back yard, because Antoinette hadn’t been eating well for several days, by asking suddenly:
“Mrs. Deane, is it straight about Miss Comfort having to go to the poor-farm?”
“Oh, dear, I’m afraid so.” Mrs. Deane sighed. “Isn’t it a pity? I—we did want to take her in here with us, Laurie, but I suppose we simply couldn’t do it.”