“Stop stringing us, Slim,” added Ned.
“Honest, I’m not fooling,” protested Slim, “I asked that pitcher what studies he was taking, and he said ‘voconometry and trigoculture.’”
The boys pondered a moment.
“I’ve got it!” shouted Fred, a light breaking in on him. “That fellow’s a ‘ringer.’ He isn’t a Mount Vernon student at all. There’s something the matter with their regular pitcher, and they’ve picked up this fellow somewhere and rung him in on us as a regular school player. They’ve been afraid we might tumble to it and ask him questions, and so they told him what to say.”
“But why did they tell him to say any nonsense like that?” asked Slim, perplexed.
“They didn’t,” explained Fred. “He’s got mixed up. What they told him to say if any one asked him was that he was studying trigonometry and vocal culture.’ He got stuck and called it ‘voconometry and trigoculture.’”
There was a roar of laughter, but this was quickly followed by indignation.
“It’s a dirty trick to play on us,” growled Billy Burton.
“Sure it is,” agreed Tom. “But it’s too late to protest now. Let’s go in and lick them anyway.”
In the fifth inning, a scorching liner struck Ned on his pitching arm. He picked it up and got his man at first. But the blow had bruised his muscles badly, and he became wild. He could not control the sphere, and gave two bases on balls. These, with an error and a hit sandwiched in, yielded two runs before the side was out.