Dick was frankly puzzled. Instead of trotting into the field to begin practice, his charges were lounging over toward the plate, and with them went the Point team. Then Dick’s eyes fell on that blue runabout again, and he frowned and followed the players, who by this time had gathered about it. Harold, who never allowed Dick to get more than six feet away from him, went, too.
“Someone will have to get that car out of here,” announced Dick impatiently. “Whose is it, anyway?”
As the band, which had been blaring forth a twostep, stopped suddenly at a signal from Gordon, just in the middle of Dick’s pronouncement, he finished it in a voice which, owing to the silence, was audible halfway to the outfield. A ripple of amusement came from the nearer seats. Dick, embarrassed by events and by an impending something that he sensed, looked blankly about the grinning faces.
“Wh-what’s the matter?” he faltered, appealing to Gordon.
Gordon cleared his throat and took a step forward. The rest of the players shuffled into the semblance of a half-circle behind him and about the blue car. The audience, none of them in the secret but all suspecting interesting developments, grew very still.
“Dick,” began Gordon, very red of countenance and nervous of manner, “we—that is——”
“Go to it, Gordie,” murmured Lanny encouragingly. Gordon took a deep breath and another start:
“The Clearfield Baseball Club, in recognition of your services as manager and—and in token of its esteem and——”
“Respect and esteem,” prompted Lanny, sotto voce.
——“Respect and esteem,” corrected Gordon, who had prepared his speech with much care and had now pretty well forgotten it, “desires to present to you this automobile, in the hope—er—in the hope——”