“No, sir. I—I quit.”
“Wise youth! Go your ways, young gentlemen. Ponder on your sins and”—Mr. Russell took up his book again—“refresh your souls with the sweet communion——”
The rest was only a mumble. Dud and Jimmy stole noiselessly away.
Fortune was good to them on the morrow. They were assembled, a sober quartette, in Dr. Duncan’s office after breakfast and gravely reprimanded and told that only a diligent application to studies could wipe out the stain of their guilt. Promises of unfaltering labor being at once forthcoming from each, they were dismissed with a final admonition to mend their ways and, they thought, a sigh of relief from the principal, never at his best in the rôle of Stern Authority.
After a ten o’clock recitation, Nick and Jimmy hurried up the river in Nick’s canoe and recovered the lost craft, Twining’s being found lodged against the bridge timbers and Hugh’s a half-mile up the stream, entangled in a sunken branch. That, to all appearances, ended the affair, but in reality there was one important consequence that was lost sight of, which was the acceptance of Dud into the circle in which Nick Blake and Hugh Ordway revolved. It didn’t happen all at once, and for a week or two Dud himself didn’t realize it, but at the end of that period he suddenly discovered himself sitting with Hugh and Nick and Bert Winslow and Ted Trafford in Nick’s room very gravely discussing such important subjects as The Value of the Sacrifice Hit, Overhand versus Underhand Pitching, When to Use the Pinch-Play and The Duties of a Third-Baseman on a Bunt to His Territory with a Man on Second. Perhaps Dud didn’t take a very large part in the discussion, but when he had anything to say he found voice to say it, and a few remarks from him on the subject of underhand pitching were well received. But the main thing was that he was there, not on sufferance but, as it seemed, quite naturally and as a matter of course. He surreptitiously pinched himself, found he was actually awake and then, for a moment, was visibly embarrassed.
I don’t pretend that either Hugh or Nick would have been broken-hearted if Dud hadn’t been present that evening, nor shall I attempt to guess just how much of the friendliness they displayed was due to sympathy. On the other hand, they were more than willing to have him there, and, when they thought of it, were at some pains to make him feel welcome. Ted Trafford took his cue from his host, and Bert Winslow’s attitude was one of careless toleration. He still looked on Dud with suspicion. Jimmy Logan couldn’t foist any lemon on him, as he once eloquently put it to Hugh! Still, he didn’t actually dislike the younger boy, and, save for an occasional mildly sarcastic comment occasioned by what he called Dud’s cheek in trying to squirm his way into upper class company and the first team, he treated the latter decently enough. The evening ended with ginger-ale and grape-juice, mixed in equal proportions in a pitcher, the scant remains of a pineapple cheese and some crackers. Ted Trafford and Dud went back to Trow together, rather silently since Ted was sleepy and Dud had nothing important to say, and parted in the corridor. Dud reflected afterwards that Trafford might have said, “Come and see me some time, Baker,” or something to like effect. But he didn’t. He merely nodded sleepily, yawned and murmured: “Night!” Dud was a bit disappointed, and without cause. Ted Trafford, who was a big, good-hearted senior, would have issued that invitation had it occurred to him that the younger boy would have set any store by it. As it was, the thought didn’t enter his mind. If Baker was a friend of Nick and Hugh, why, that was all there was to it. “Any friend of my friend,” is the way Ted would have put it.
Followed a week bare of real incident. Dud, like the other members of that picnic party, applied himself doggedly to his lessons in an effort to get square with the Office again and turned out each week-day afternoon for baseball practice. Sometimes he pitched for the scrubs and more often his work consisted of serving them up to the batters at the net and, afterwards, being relieved by Kelly or Brunswick, practicing batting himself. The first game of the season came off that Wednesday afternoon, with the second team as the opponent. It wasn’t much of a contest. Errors swelled the score of each team and all sorts of delays slowed the game up so that there was time for only seven innings. Dud took no part, the twirling being performed by Ben Myatt for three innings and by Nate Leddy for the rest of the game. The second team pitchers were severely handled and the first won by the decisive score of 17 to 7.
If there was any special sensation in that contest it was in the sudden eminence of “Hobo” Ordway as a batter. Hugh, going into the line-up in the fourth inning, came twice to bat and on each occasion smashed a long, clean two-bagger into left-center. In the field he had only three chances, but he took them all. It was only in throwing in that Hugh was weak. Jimmy went to right field for three innings, made one rather brilliant running catch of a long fly, failed to get a hit and retired in favor of a pinch hitter in the sixth. After that Wednesday game life settled down again rather monotonously, but not uninterestingly, for Dud. On Saturday the team journeyed away and played Portsmouth Grammar School and won handily against a weak adversary. Dud didn’t accompany the team as a member nor did he go along with the half-hundred ardent rooters. Neither did Jimmy. Mr. Russell in refusing their request for leave, intimated that the afternoon might be spent far more profitably in study. “J. P.” was kindly but firm. Doubtless his advice was well-meant and worthy of consideration, but I regret to say it was not followed. Instead, the two boys went trout fishing in Three Gallon Brook, a mile back of school. Dud used flies and got not even a nibble. Jimmy, with a plentiful supply of angle-worms, landed a four-inch sunfish. As no one, so far as they were aware, had ever caught, seen or suspected the presence of a trout in Three Gallon Brook, they were not disappointed. The only feature of the excursion not counted on occurred when Dud slipped from a rock during the effort to free his line from a snag and landed in three feet of extremely cold water. Fortunately that happened after Jimmy had landed his catch and so they were about ready to go home, anyway. Jimmy carried the sunfish back to school dangling from an alder branch. That is, it dangled until they reached the school grounds. Then it was placed tenderly in Jimmy’s coat pocket and smuggled to Number 19. When he returned from supper he brought salt, and the fish was fried over the gas—with the door and transom carefully closed and both windows wide open—and consumed in a peculiarly flabby and underdone condition. Jimmy partook with gusto, or pretended to, but Dud did scant justice to the repast. Jimmy said he was jealous. Gus Weston happened in before the penetrating aroma of the sunfish had been entirely dissipated and asked anxiously what the trouble was. Whereupon Jimmy stopped trying to dislodge a bone that had worked its way in back of his tongue and described movingly the size, ferocious aspect and fighting qualities of that fish, recounting with much detail the long, exhausting struggle incident to its capture. And Weston diplomatically vowed that he believed every word of it; and had either of them a rattling good detective story to lend him?