“Um-m.” The professor held a glass paperweight up before Ken and asked a question about it. Next he held out a ruler and asked something about that, and also a bottle of ink. Following this he put a few queries about specific gravity, atomic weight, and the like. Then he sat thrumming his desk and appeared far away in thought. After a while he turned to Ken with a smile that made his withered, parchment-like face vastly different.
“Where do you play?” he asked.
“S-sir?” stammered Ken.
“In baseball, I mean. What place do you play? Catch? Thrower? I don't know the names much.”
Ken replied eagerly, and then it seemed he was telling this stern old man all about baseball. He wanted to know what fouls were, and how to steal bases, and he was nonplussed by such terms as “hit-and-run.” Ken discoursed eloquently on his favorite sport, and it was like a kind of dream to be there. Strange things were always happening to him.
“I've never seen a game,” said the professor. “I used to play myself long ago, when we had a yarn ball and pitched underhand. I'll have to come out to the field some day. President Halstead, why, he likes baseball, he's a—a—what do you call it?”
“A fan—a rooter?” replied Ken, smiling.
“Um-m. I guess that's it. Well, Mr. Ward, I'm glad to meet you. You may go now.”
Ken got up blushing like a girl. “But, Doctor, you were to—I was to be examined.”
“I've examined you,” he drawled, with a dry chuckle, and he looked over his huge spectacles at Ken. “I'll give you a passing mark. But, Mr. Ward, you know a heap more about baseball than you know about physics.”