Part 25

There was a slight commotion opposite and a hand fluttered beseechingly, while Butsey's weak voice managed to say:

"Take it away--take it away."

Dink rose and cast a towel over the set of seven colors, and then resumed his seat.

"It's all right; I've hidden it," he said.

Butsey rolled from the bed, tottered over to his own washstand and drank deeply from the water pitcher. Then he turned on the melancholy Stover.

"Say!"

"Go ahead! Soak it to me!"

"I thought you were old enough to go out alone."

"They lied to me," said Stover, kicking a chair.

"Say that again."

"They lied," repeated Dink, but with a more uncertain note.

"This from you!" said Butsey maliciously.

A great ethical light burst over Dink. He scratched his head and then looked at Butsey, grinning a sheepish grin.

"Well, I guess it was coming to me--but they are wonders!" he said, with reluctant admiration. "I'll take my medicine, but I'll get back at them, by jiminy! You see if I don't."

"For the love of Mike, give us the story!"

"You'll keep it twenty-four hours?"

"So help me----"

"I'm a sucker, all right," said Dink ruefully. Then he stopped and blurted out: "Say, White, I guess it was about what I needed. I guess I'm not such a little wonder-worker, after all. I've been fresh--rotten fresh. But, say, from now on I'm holding my ear to the ground; and when it comes to humbly picking up a few crumbs of knowledge you'll find me ready and willing. I'm reformed. Now, here's the tale:"

Dink, under the influence of the new emotion, made a fairly full confession, merely overlooking the shoes that Flash did not carry over the Princeton goal line, and suppressing that detail of the Foundation House's supposed contribution, which had lent such a peculiar value to the souvenir crockery set. By four o'clock Butsey White had sufficiently recovered to remember the afternoon baseball match.

Ten minutes later Dink, lost in a lapping baseball suit lent by Cheyenne Baxter, re-enforced with safety pins, stationed himself in the outfield behind a catcher's mitt, for preliminary practice with little Susie Satterly and Beekstein Hall, who was shortsighted and wore glasses.

The result of five minutes' frantic chasing was that Dink, who surprised every one by catching a fly that somehow stuck in his glove, was promoted to centerfield; Susie Satterly, who had stopped two grounders, took left; while Beekstein was ignominiously escorted to a far position in rightfield and firmly requested to stop whatever he could with his chest.

The Cleve cohorts arrived, thirty strong, like banditti marching to sack a city, openly voicing their derision for the nine occupants of the Green House. The contest, which at first sight seemed unequal, was not in reality so, Tough McCarty and Cheyenne Baxter being an unusually strong battery, while the infield, with Butsey White at first, the White Mountain Canary at second, Stuffy Brown short-stop and the Coffee-colored Angel at third, quite outclassed the invaders. The trouble was in the outfield--where the trouble in such contests are sure to congregate.

Stover had never been so thoroughly frightened in his life. His imagination, boylike, was aghast at the unknown. A great question was to be decided in a few minutes, when his turn would come to step up to the box and expose himself to the terrific cannonade of Nick Carter, the lengthy pitcher of the Cleve. The curious thing was that on this point Stover himself was quite undecided. Was he a coward, or was he not? Would his legs go back on him, or would he stand his ground, knowing that the stinging ball might strike anywhere--on the tender wrist bones, shattering the point of the elbow, or landing with a deadly thud right over his temple, which he remembered was an absolutely fatal spot?

His first two innings in the field were a complete success--not a ball came his way. With his fielding average quite intact he came in to face the crisis.

"Brown to the bat, Stover on deck, Satterly in the hole," came the shrill voice of Fate in the person of Shrimp Davis, the official scorer.

Stover nervously tried one bat after another; each seemed to weigh a ton. Then Cheyenne Baxter joined him, crouching beside him for a word of advice.

"Now, Dink," he said in a whisper, keeping his eye on Stuffy Brown, who, being unable to hit the straightest ball, was pawing the plate and making terrific preparatory swings with his bat. "Now, Dink, listen here. (Pick out an easy one, Stuffy, and bang it on the nose. Hi-yi, good waiting, Stuffy) Nick Carter's wild as a wet hen. All he's got is a fast outcurve. Now, what you want to do is to edge up close to the plate and let him hit you. (Oh, robber! That wasn't a strike! Say, Mr. Umpire, give us a square deal, will you?) Walk right into it, Dink, and if it happens to hit you on the wrist rub above the elbow like the mischief."

"Above the elbow?" said Dink in a hollow voice.