“No, I don’t see at all,” she responded with suspicious sweetness. “I shall be very glad to go to the game with you, Dick, but I refuse to be palmed off on ‘Gordon or one of the fellows!’”
“Then I’ll be here for you at two-thirty, Louise. It isn’t very far, after all; only three blocks, you know.”
“I ought to know,” she said dryly, “since I can see the top of the grandstand this minute. I may decide, however, that I want to go by way of the Common, Dick.”
Dick smiled doubtfully. “We-ell, that’s all right. I’m game! Now I guess I’d better be getting along.”
“The car just went in,” said Louise. “You’ve got nearly a quarter of an hour yet. How are you getting along with your pupil?”
“Finely! I tell him two or three times a week that we’ll never be able to do it, and he doubles up his fists and glares at me and wants to fight—almost. He’s an awfully stubborn little chap and he’s simply made up his mind that he’s going to get into school this Fall, and I think he will, too. He will if I can keep him mad!” And Dick, smiling, went swinging off to catch the car.
That game with the Live Wires wasn’t as easy for Clearfield as Dick and Gordon and most of the others expected it to be. Of course Way wasn’t much of a pitcher, and that had to be reckoned with, but even allowing for that the Live Wires showed up a lot better than anticipated. From a financial standpoint the game was a huge success, in spite of the fact that the admission had been lowered to fifteen cents to entice the mill workers to attend. Attend they did, and “rooted” so lustily and incessantly for their team that poor Way was more than once up in the air. Young Tim Turner played in right field and Jack Tappen went over to left in place of Way. Tim didn’t do so badly, since out of three chances he got two flies and only muffed the third because the crowd hooted so loudly.
It was quite a tight game up to the fifth inning, with both pitchers suffering badly at the hands of the opposing batsmen and both infields guilty of many stupid errors. But in the fifth Clearfield landed on Kelly, the Live Wires’ pitcher, and batted around before they were stopped, adding seven runs to the six already accumulated. In the seventh the opposing team returned the compliment and had Way dancing out of the path of liners and giving bases on the least provocation. But the infield steadied down then and only three runs came over for the Live Wires. The final score was fourteen to eight and Dick, who had acted as gateman in Tim’s absence, turned over nearly seventeen dollars to himself as treasurer. So, on the whole, the game was a success.
When Dick got home after the game his mother told him that a Mr. Potter, from the Reporter, had called to see him and would be back about eight. Gordon came over after supper and was still there when the representative of the newspaper repeated his call. Mr. Potter, a wide-awake, energetic young man of twenty-five or six years, professed his pleasure at finding Gordon on hand. “Because,” he said as he took a chair in the Loverings’ little parlor, “I want to talk about another game of ball between your team and the Point. I wrote the story of the last game, by the way. I don’t know whether you saw it?”
“Yes, we read it,” said Dick. “It was awfully good, I thought.”