“Maybe, but you can’t bat a little bit,” responded Arthur triumphantly. “And you know you can’t.”
“If I had more practice, Arthur——”
“No, sir, you couldn’t ever be a real corking batter.” Arthur was kindly but firm. “A fellow has to have the batting eye. Of course I don’t say that maybe if you worked awfully hard this year and practiced every day you mightn’t be a lot better, but I don’t believe you’ll ever be a real star, Billy.”
The subject, engrossing to both boys, continued for some time, and in the end it was agreed that Billy should become a sort of unofficial outfield substitute with the privilege of practicing with the nine sometimes and making himself useful chasing the long flies that infrequently went over Mr. Bannerman’s garden fence. As Mr. Bannerman was aged and crabbed and disliked seeing small boys wallowing across his asparagus bed in search of baseballs, the position assigned to Billy promised as much danger as honor. But he knew himself to be fast on his feet and knew Mr. Bannerman to be slow, and he accepted gratefully. Soon after that Arthur was summoned hurriedly by his father, so hurriedly that he left behind him an enticing blue paper-bound pamphlet entitled “How to Play Base Ball” which Billy discovered just before supper and which he surreptitiously studied later behind the shielding pages of “Travels in the Holy Land.”
But he found it difficult to understand until he happened on a dozen pages at the end of the booklet devoted to advertisements of baseball goods. There were soul-stirring pictures and descriptions of mitts and gloves, bats and masks and balls. He admired and coveted, and mentally compared the prices set down against the articles with the contents of the little box in his top bureau drawer that was his bank. The comparison wasn’t encouraging. Billy sighed. And just then his eyes fell on a word that challenged attention. “Westcott’s Junior League Ball,” he read. “Regulation size and weight, rubber center, all-wool yarn, double cover of best quality selected horsehide. Warranted to last a full game without losing elasticity or shape.”
Billy read it twice. Then he became thoughtful. After that he read the description of the baseball again and his eyes became big and round. Later, in bed, with the light from the electric lamp at the corner illuming the ceiling, he lay sleeping for a long hour, experiencing the triumph that thrills all great discoverers and inventors.
The next morning he surprised every member of the household by being downstairs in advance of breakfast and with his shoes tied! His mother viewed him anxiously and felt his face but was unable to detect anything abnormal save, perhaps, a certain intensity of gaze and impatience of delay. There was a full half-hour between breakfast and school and Billy made the most of it. Captain Ezra was smoking his pipe on the wharf when Billy arrived, breathless, on the scene.
“Well, well,” exclaimed the Captain. “Ain’t you round kind of early?”
But there was scant time for amenities and Billy plunged directly into his business. “Are you going down South again pretty soon, sir?” he inquired anxiously. The Captain allowed that he was; as soon, in fact, as the new cargo was aboard, which, if he wasn’t saddled with the laziest crew on record, ought to be in about four days. “And are you going to Pirate Key?” Billy continued. The Captain blinked.
“Well, I might,” he replied after slight hesitation. “Why?”