“Only too glad,” I answered; “but how about Dick Palmer? I don’t want to crowd him out if he wants to go. You know, he has been a member of the nine as long as I have.”
“Oh, that is all right. You have the advantage because you were a regular member of the nine from the start, while Dick was only substitute year before last. I have spoken to him, and he acknowledges that you have the choice by all odds.”
“All right,” I said, “I can go next week.”
“I don’t know yet for sure when it will be, as I said in the meeting. It is curious I haven’t received a word. I ought to have heard long ago. If I don’t get a letter tomorrow morning I will telegraph to Slade.”
“Well, a few hours’ warning is enough for me,” I answered. “Good meeting tonight, wasn’t it? Lots of excitement and enthusiasm.”
“Yes,” said Tony, “and what puzzled me more than anything else was Len Howard. No wonder I fell flat. I was simply paralyzed. He must have been crazy to make such a proposition.”
“Perhaps,” said I, looking at Ray, “he was trying to work off a grudge he has had against you ever since you went out one Saturday afternoon last month and beat him in tennis on his own court.”
“Oh, I don’t think there was anything personal in it. I don’t think Howard nurses any grudge against me.”
“Well, don’t bank on that, Ray,” said Tony. “I happen to know that he had a lot of money upon that tennis game, and it ground him terribly to be beaten.”