“Get out!” cried Fleet. “How can a school teacher knit and teach at the same time?”
“This teacher is knitting her eyebrows,” said Pod, and dodged out of the way as Fleet made a dash for him. The Kattskill Bay boys laughed heartily at Pod’s joke, which caused Fleet to remark:
“If you heard as many of them as we do, they wouldn’t be funny.”
“And if you heard as many bad verses as we do,” said Pod, “you’d hate to travel in the company we travel in.”
Fleet glared at him but said nothing, and a moment later, when Jones went out on a grounder to Corker, all interest became centered on the game.
Day flied out to Burton and Lorrens went out on a grounder, Strange to Windle.
Believing the seventh might be their lucky inning, the Cleverdale boys tried their utmost to score. The cry with them grew to be not, “Can we win?” but “Can we save ourselves from a shut-out?” Captain Biddle thought they could. Chot Duncan had resolved they shouldn’t.
Strange was up for Cleverdale, and he knocked a single into right. No man had yet tried to steal a base on Tom, so Strange resolved to be the one to humiliate Bert Creighton’s catcher. He was a swift runner, and felt that with a good lead he could make it. With the first ball Chot threw, he was off for second. Burton, knowing that Strange was going to attempt a steal, struck wildly at the ball to bother Tom.
But Tom was always at his best in situations of this kind, and with apparently no effort he shot the ball down to Bert, who put it on Strange when he was ten feet from the bag, Tom having anticipated the runner and thrown that far to the right, where Bert stood just a foot or so back of the base line.
A cheer went up from the Creighton rooters. This was the sort of playing they liked best to see.