“No, Jimmie, I refuse to lend countenance to the proceedings. You are overdoing it, sir, overdoing it vastly! Why, confound it, sir, who are you here at Harvard? What do I see in the morning paper? ‘Robinson is confident.’ ‘Plucky captain and first-baseman of the Harvard nine looks for a victory over the Tigers.’ That’s the sort of stuff I read, sir! A whole column of it! That’s who you are, sir; you’re just the baseball captain; you’re not James Robinson, Jr., not for a minute! And the papers are full of silly talk about you, and refer to you as ‘Rob.’ It’s disgraceful, if nothing else!”
“Well, dad, I don’t like that sort of notoriety any better than you do, but I don’t think it’s fair to blame me for it. When you win a big case at home it’s just the same, sir; the papers even print your picture sometimes, and that’s more than they do with mine, because they can’t get it.”
His father glared silently. It was too true to bear contradiction. But he wasn’t one to back down any further than was absolutely necessary.
“Maybe, sir, maybe. But let me inform you that winning an important case in the courts is decidedly different from winning a game of baseball before a lot of shouting, yelling idiots with tin horns and flags! Eh? What?”
“Well, I don’t altogether agree with you there, dad. In either case it’s a matter of using your brain and doing your level best and keeping your wits about you. The results may not be on a par as to importance, sir, although—” he smiled slightly—“maybe it depends some on the point of view. I tell you what, sir,” he went on, “you come out to the Princeton game this afternoon and if, when it’s over with, you say that trying to win a big game of college baseball isn’t worth doing, why, I’ll give up the captaincy and have nothing more to do with such things next year! What do you say, sir?”
“I refuse to enter into any such agreement, sir. Moreover, I have no intention of sitting on a plank in the hot sun and watching a lot of idiots run around the bases. No, sir, if you’ve got to take part in that game, as I suspect you have, you go ahead and I’ll look after myself. Only I must have at least one undisturbed hour with you before my train goes.”
“Certainly, dad; I’ll be with you all the evening. I hope you’ll be comfortable. You’ll find the library at the Union very pleasant if you want to read. I will be back here at about half after five. I do wish, though, you’d come out, sir.”
“You’ve heard me on that subject, Jimmie,” replied Mr. Robinson, severely. “Naturally, you—ah—have my wishes for success, but I must decline to make myself miserable all the afternoon.”
After the Hero had gone, Mr. Robinson, with much grumbling, strove to make himself comfortable with a book. But he had looked upon his journey to Cambridge as something in the way of a holiday, and sitting in a Morris chair didn’t conform to his idea of the correct way of spending it. The Yard looked inviting, and so he took the volume and went out under the trees. But he didn’t read. Instead he leaned the back of his immaculate gray coat against a tree-trunk and fell to thinking. From where he sat he could see, at a distance, the window of the room that he had occupied during his last two years in the Law School. That window suggested memories.