NID AND NOD

[The door was opened and the boy peered into the dim hall]

NID AND NOD

BY
RALPH HENRY BARBOUR

Author of “The Crimson Sweater,” “Harry’s Island,”
“Team-Mates,” “The Turner Twins,” etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY
C. M. RELYEA

THE CENTURY CO.
New York and London
1923

Copyright, 1923, by
The Century Co.

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

NID AND NOD

CHAPTER I
AT THE LITTLE BLUE SHOP

A bell tinkled as the door of the little blue shop opened and closed, and continued to tinkle, although decreasingly, as the stout youth who had entered turned unhesitatingly but with a kind of impressive dignity toward where in the dimmer light of the store a recently installed soda-fountain, modest of size but brave with white marble and nickel, gleamed a welcome.

In response to the summons of the bell a girl came through the door that led to the rear of the little building. As she came she fastened a long apron over the dark blue dress and sent an inquiring hand upward to the smooth brown hair. Evidently reassured, she said, “Hello,” in a friendly voice and, having established herself behind the counter, looked questioningly at the customer.

“Hello,” responded the boy. “Give me a chocolate sundae with walnuts and a slice of pineapple, please. And you might put a couple of cherries on top. Seen Nod this afternoon?”

The girl shook her head as she deposited a portion of ice-cream in a dish and pressed the nickeled disk marked “Chocolate.” “I’ve just this minute got back from school,” she replied. “Aren’t you out early to-day?”

“No recitation last hour,” the youth explained as his eyes followed her movements fascinatedly. “That all the chopped walnuts I get, Polly?”

“It certainly is when you ask for pineapple and cherries, too,” answered the girl firmly. She tucked a small spoon on the side of the alarming concoction, laid a paper napkin in front of the customer, and placed the dish beside it. “Would you like a glass of water?”

The youth paused in raising the first spoonful to his mouth and looked to see if she spoke with sarcasm. Apparently, however, she did not, and so he said, “Yes, please,” or most of it; the last of it was decidedly unintelligible, proceeding as it did from behind a mouthful of ice-cream, chocolate syrup, and cherry. When the glass of water had been added to the array before him and he had swallowed three spoonfuls of the satisfying medley, the stout youth sighed deeply, and his gaze went roaming to an appealing display of pastry beyond the girl.

“Guess I’ll have a cream-cake,” he announced. “And one of those tarts, please. What’s in ’em, Polly?”

“Raspberry jam.”

“Uh-huh. All right. Better make it two, then.”

Polly Deane eyed him severely. “Kewpie Proudtree,” she exclaimed, “you know you oughtn’t to eat all this sweet stuff!”

“Oh, what’s the difference?” demanded the youth morosely. “Gee, a fellow can’t starve all the time! Maybe I won’t go in for football next year, anyway. It’s a dog’s life. No desserts you can eat, no candy, no—”

“Well, I think that’s a very funny way for you to talk,” interrupted Polly indignantly. “After the way you played in the Farview game and everything! Why, every one said you were just wonderful, Kewpie!”

Kewpie’s gloom was momentarily dissipated, giving place to an expression of gratification. He hastily elevated a portion of ice-cream to his mouth and murmured deprecatingly, “Oh, well, but—”

“And you know perfectly well,” continued the girl, “that pastry and sweets make you fat, and Mr. Mulford won’t like it a bit, and—”

It was Kewpie’s turn to interrupt, and he did it vigorously. “What of it?” he demanded. “I don’t have to stay fat, do I? I’ve got all summer to train down again, haven’t I? Gee, Polly, what’s the use of starving all the winter and spring just to play football for a couple of months next fall? Other fellows don’t do it.”

“Why, Kewpie, you know very well that most of them do! You don’t see Ned and Laurie eating pastry here every afternoon.”

“Huh, that’s a lot different. Nod’s out for baseball, and Nid’s scared to do anything Nod doesn’t do. Why, gee, if one of those twins broke his leg the other’d go and bust his! I never saw anything so—so disgusting. Say, don’t I get those tarts?”

“Well, you certainly won’t if you talk like that about your best friends,” answered Polly crisply.

“Oh, well, I didn’t say anything,” muttered Kewpie, grinning. “Those fellows are different, and you know it. Gee, if I was on the baseball team I’d let pastry alone, too, I guess. It stands to reason. You understand. But it doesn’t make any difference to any one what I do. They wouldn’t let me play basket-ball, and when I wanted to try for goal-tend on the hockey-team Scoville said it wouldn’t be fair to the other teams to hide the net entirely. Smart Aleck! Besides, I’m only a hundred and sixty-one pounds right now.”

“That’s more than you were in the fall, I’m certain,” said Polly severely.

“Sure,” agreed Kewpie. “Gee, when I came out of the Farview game I was down to a hundred and fifty-one and a half! I guess my normal weight’s about a hundred and sixty-five,” he added comfortably. “What about those tarts and the cream-cake?”

“You may have the cream-cake and one tart, and that’s all. I oughtn’t to let you have either. Laurie says—”

“Huh, he says a lot of things,” grunted Kewpie, setting his teeth into the crisp flakiness of the tart. “And I notice that what he says is mighty important around here, too.” Kewpie smiled slyly, and Polly’s cheeks warmed slightly. “Anything Nod says or does is all right, I suppose.”

“What Laurie says is certainly a lot more important than what you say, Mr. Proudtree,” replied Polly warmly, “and—”

“Now, say,” begged Kewpie, “I didn’t mean to be fresh, honest Polly! Gee, if you’re going to call me ‘Mister Proudtree’ I won’t ever—ever—”

He couldn’t seem to decide what it was he wouldn’t ever do, and so he thrust the last of the tart into his mouth and looked hurt and reproachful. When Kewpie looked that way no one, least of all the soft-hearted Polly, could remain offended. Polly’s haughtiness vanished, and she smiled. Finally she laughed merrily, and Kewpie’s face cleared instantly.

“Kewpie,” said Polly, “you’re perfectly silly.”

“Oh, I’m just a nut,” agreed the boy cheerfully. “Well, I guess I’ll go over to the field and see what’s doing. If you see Nod tell him I’m looking for him, will you?”

Polly looked after him concernedly. Something was wrong with Kewpie. He seemed gloomy and almost—almost reckless! Of late he had rioted in sweets and the stickiest of fountain mixtures, which was not like him. She wondered if he had a secret sorrow, and decided to speak to Laurie and Ned about him.

Polly Deane was rather pretty, with an oval face not guiltless of freckles, brown hair and brown eyes and a nice smile. She was not quite sixteen years old. Polly’s mother—known to the boys of Hillman’s School as the “Widow”—kept the little blue-painted shop, and Polly, when not attending the Orstead High School, helped her. The shop occupied the front room on the ground floor. Behind it was a combined kitchen, dining and living room, and up-stairs were two sleeping chambers. Mrs. Deane could have afforded a more luxurious home, but she liked her modest business and often declared that she didn’t know where she’d find a place more comfortable.

Polly was aroused from her concern over the recent customer by the abrupt realization that he had forgotten to pay for his entertainment. She sighed. Kewpie already owed more than the school rules allowed. Just then the door opened to admit a slim, round-faced boy of about Polly’s age. He had red-brown hair under his blue school cap, an impertinent nose, and very blue eyes. He wore a suit of gray, with a dark-blue sweater beneath the coat. He wore, also, a cheerful and contagious smile.

“Hello, Polly,” was his greeting. “Laurie been in yet?”

“No, no one but Kewpie, Ned. He was looking for Laurie, too. He’s just gone.”

“Well, I don’t know where the silly hombre’s got to,” said the new-comer. “He was in class five minutes ago, and then he disappeared. Thought he’d be over here. I’d like a chocolate ice-cream soda, please. Say, don’t you hate this kind of weather? No ice and the ground too wet to do anything on. Funny weather you folks have here in the East.”

“Oh, it won’t be this way long,” answered Polly as she filled his order. “The ground will be dry in a day or two, if it doesn’t rain—or snow again.”

“Snow again!” exclaimed the other. “Gee-all-whillikens, does it snow all summer here?”

“Well, sometimes we have a snow in April, Ned, and this is only the twenty-first of March. But when spring does come it’s beautiful. I just love the spring, don’t you?”

“Reckon so. I like our springs back home, but I don’t know what your Eastern springs are like yet.” He dipped into his soda and nodded approvingly. “Say, Polly, you certainly can mix ’em. Congreve’s has got nothing on you. Talking about spring, back in California—”

He was interrupted by the opening of the door. The new arrival was a slim, round-faced youth of about Polly’s age. He had reddish-brown hair under the funny little blue cap he wore, a somewhat impertinent nose, and very blue eyes. He wore a suit of gray knickers with coat to match and a dark blue sweater beneath the coat. Also, he wore a most cheerful smile. The first arrival turned and, with spoon suspended, viewed him sternly.

“I bid you say where you have been,” he demanded.

The new-comer threw forth his right hand, palm upward, and poised himself on the toes of his wet shoes like a ballet-dancer.

“In search of you, my noble twin,” he answered promptly. “Hello, Polly!”

“Punk!” growled Ned Turner. “‘Been’ and ‘twin’! My eye!”

“Perfectly allowable rime, old son. What are you having?”

“Chocolate ice-cream soda. Say, what became of you after school? I looked all over for you.”

“Ran up to the room a minute. Thought you’d wait, you dumb-bell.”

“I did wait. Then I thought you’d started over here. Whose wheel is that you’ve got out there?”

“Search me. Elk Thurston’s, I guess. I found it doing nothing in front of West. I’ll take a pineapple and strawberry, please, Polly.”

“Well, you had a nerve! Elk will scalp you.”

Laurie shrugged and accepted his refreshment. “I only borrowed it,” he explained carelessly. “Here comes the mob.”

The afternoon influx of Hillman’s boys was begun by two tousled-haired juniors demanding “Vanilla sundaes with chopped walnuts, please, Miss Polly!” and after them the stream became steady for several minutes. Further sustained conversation with Polly being no longer possible, Ned and Laurie took their glasses to the other side of the shop, where Laurie perched himself on the counter and watched the confusion. Ned’s eyes presently strayed to the array of pastry behind the further counter, and he sighed wistfully. But as Laurie, who was in training for baseball, might not partake of such things, Ned resolutely removed his gaze from that part of the shop, not without a second sigh, and, turning it to the door, nudged Laurie in the ribs with an elbow.

“Thurston,” he breathed.

Laurie looked calmly at the big upper-middle boy who was entering. “Seems put out about something,” he murmured.

“Say,” demanded “Elk” Thurston in a voice that dominated the noise of talk and laughter and the almost continuous hiss of the soda-fountain, “what smart guy swiped my bicycle and rode it over here?”

Elkins Thurston was seventeen, big, dark-complexioned, and domineering, and as the chatter died into comparative silence the smaller boys questioned each other with uneasy glances. No one, however, confessed, and Elk, pushing his way roughly toward the fountain, complained bitterly. “Well, some fresh Aleck did, and I’ll find out who he was, too, and when I do I’ll teach him to let my things alone!”

“What’s the trouble, Elk?” asked Laurie politely. Ned, nudging him to keep still, found Elk observing him suspiciously.

“You heard, I guess,” answered Elk. “Did you have it?”

“Me?” said Ned. “No, I didn’t have it.”

“I don’t mean you; I mean him.” Elk pointed an accusing finger at Laurie.

“Me?” asked Laurie. “What was it you lost?”

“Shut up,” whispered Ned. “He’ll come over and—”

“My bicycle, that’s what! I’ll bet you swiped it, you fresh kid.”

“What’s it look like?” inquired Laurie interestedly.

“Never you mind.” Elk strode across, fixing Laurie with angry eyes. “Say, you took it, didn’t you?”

“Must have,” said Laurie cheerfully. “Did you want it?”

“Did I—did I want— Say, for two pins I’d—”

“But, my dear old chap, how was I to know that you’d be wanting to ride it?” asked Laurie earnestly. “There it was, leaning against the steps, not earning its keep, and you hadn’t said a thing to me about wanting it, and so I just simply borrowed it. Honest, Elk, if you’d so much as hinted to me, never so delicately, that—”

There were titters from the younger members of the much interested audience and even unconcealed laughter from the older boys, and Elk’s dark countenance took on a deeper and more angry red as he thrust it close to Laurie’s.

“That’ll be about all for you,” he growled. “You’re one of these funny guys, aren’t you? Must have your little joke, eh? Well, see how you like this one!”

Elk raised his right hand, unclenched but formidable. An expectant hush filled the little store. Polly, with troubled eyes fixed on the drama, deluged a pineapple ice-cream with soda until it dripped on the counter below. Laurie continued to smile.

CHAPTER II
KEWPIE STATES HIS CASE

“Whatever’s going on?” asked a pleasant voice from the doorway that led into the room behind the shop. “Is—is anything wrong, Polly? Dear me, child, you’re running that all over the counter!”

More than two dozen pairs of eyes turned to where Mrs. Deane looked perplexedly about her. She was a sweet-faced little woman whose white hair was contradicted by a plump, unlined countenance and rosy cheeks. Elk’s uplifted arm dropped slowly back. For a short moment the silence continued. Then a veritable Babel of voices arose. “Hello, Mrs. Deane!” “Say, Mrs. Deane, don’t you remember me paying you ten cents last Friday? Miss Polly says I still owe—” “Mrs. Deane, when are you going to have some more of those twirly things with the cream filling?” “Mrs. Deane, will you wait on me, please? I want—” “Aw, I was ahead of him—”

The Widow Deane beamed and made her way to the rear of the counter, greeting the boys by name. She was fond of all boys, but those of Hillman’s School she looked on as peculiarly her own, and she knew the names of nearly every one of them and, to a remarkable extent, their taste in the matter of pastry and beverages. “I couldn’t imagine what had happened,” she was explaining to Cas Bennett as she filled his order for two apple turnovers. “All of a sudden everything became so still in here! What was it?”

Cas grinned. “Oh, just some of Nod Turner’s foolishness,” he replied evasively. “He and Thurston were—were talking.”

They were still talking, for that matter, although their fickle audience no longer heeded. The interruption had quite spoiled Elk’s great scene, and after lowering his arm he had not raised it again. Even he realized that you couldn’t start anything when Mrs. Deane was present. But he was still angry and was explaining to Laurie none too elegantly that vengeance was merely postponed and not canceled. Ned, maintaining outward neutrality, watched Elk very closely. Ned had an idea, perhaps a mistaken one, that when it came to fistic encounters it was his bounden duty to substitute for Laurie, and he had been on the point of substituting when Mrs. Deane’s appearance had called a halt.

Laurie’s smile gave place to sudden gravity as he interrupted Elk’s flow of eloquence. “That will do,” he said. “I’m not afraid of you, Thurston, but it’s silly to get so upset over a trifle. Of course I shouldn’t have taken your wheel, but I didn’t hurt it any, and you’ve bawled me out quite enough, don’t you think? I’ll apologize, if you like, and—”

“I don’t want your apology,” growled Elk. “You’re too blamed fresh, Turner, and you talk too much. After this you let everything of mine alone. If you don’t, I’ll do what I was going to do when the old lady came in. Understand?”

“Perfectly,” replied Laurie soberly. “Have a soda?”

“Not with you, you little shrimp!” Elk strode away, fuming, to elbow his way to the fountain.

“What did you have to say that for?” asked Ned. “You had him pretty nearly calmed down, and then you had to spoil it all by offering him a drink. When he said you talk too much he was dead right!”

“Oh, well, what’s he want to kick up such a fuss for?” asked Laurie cheerfully. “Come on. I’ve got to beat it to gym for practice.”

They waved a farewell to Polly over the heads and shoulders of the throng about the fountain, but that young lady demanded speech with them and left her duties for a hasty word nearer the door. “I’ve just got to see you boys about Kewpie,” she announced. “It’s very important. Can’t you come back a minute before supper, Ned?”

“Kewpie?” asked Laurie. “What’s wrong with him?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I want to talk about. There isn’t time now.”

“All right, we’ll be back about five thirty,” agreed Ned. “By. See you later.”

“Wonder what’s up,” said Laurie when, having reached School Park, they turned their steps briskly over the slushy pavements toward Hillman’s. “Looked perfectly normal last time I saw him.”

“Kewpie? Sure, all except his size. That’s not normal. By the way, he was looking for you, Polly said. Matter of life or death.”

“Huh, I know what he wants. He’s got it into that crazy head of his that he can pitch, and he wants me to give him a try-out. I sort of half promised I would.”

“Mean he wants to pitch for the nine?” asked Ned incredulously.

“Well, he wants to get on the squad, anyway. Thinks that if I tell Mr. Mulford he’s sort of good, Pinky will take him on.”

“Would he?”

Laurie shrugged. “I don’t believe. Mulford warned the fellows two weeks back that if they didn’t report for indoor work he didn’t want them later. And he generally keeps his word, Pinky does.”

“Why didn’t Kewpie think of it before?” asked Ned.

“Search me, old dear. What’s troubling me is that he’s thought of it now. He’s been pestering the life out of me for a week.”

“What’s he want you to look him over for? Why doesn’t he ask Cas Bennett or some one who knows something about pitching?”

“Reckon he knows they wouldn’t bother with him. Thinks because Pinky’s got it into his old bean that he can make a catcher of me that I can spot a Mathewson or a Mays with my eyes shut. I appreciate his faith in me and all that, Ned, and it wounds me sorely that my own kith and kin—meaning you, old dear—haven’t the same—er—boundless trust in my ability, but, just between the two of us, I don’t know a curve from a drop yet, and if I can stop one with my mitt I’m as pleased as anything and don’t care a continental whether the silly thing stays in said mitt or doesn’t. Frankly, I’m plumb convinced that Pinky had a brain-storm when he dragged me in from the outfield and stuck me behind a wire bird-cage!”

“Oh, I guess he knows his business,” responded Ned. “Anyhow, you’ve got to do your best. If you don’t I’ll lick the daylight out of you.”

“Don’t you mean into me?” asked Laurie sweetly. “Seems to me that ought to be the proper phrase. Having, as I understand physiology, no daylight in me, to start with—”

“Oh, shut up! I mean what I say, though. We agreed when we got here last fall that I was to go in for football and you for baseball. I know I didn’t make very good—”

“Shut up yourself! You did so!”

“But that’s the more reason you should. The honor of the Turners is at stake, partner. Don’t you forget that!”

“Oh, I’ll do my best,” sighed Laurie, “but I certainly do hold it ag’in Pinky for butting in on my quiet, peaceful life out in the field and talking me into this catching stuff. Gosh, I had no idea the human hand could propel a ball through space, as it were, the way those pitcher guys do! Some time I’ll break a couple of fingers, I suppose, and then I’ll get let out.”

“Oh, no, you won’t,” said Ned grimly. “All the big league catchers have two or three broken fingers on each hand. Don’t count on that, old son!”

They had crossed Walnut Street now and were stamping the melted snow from their shoes on the drier concrete sidewalk before the school property. Above the top of a privet hedge the upper stories of the school buildings were in sight, West Hall, School Hall, and East Hall facing Summit Street in order. In the windows of West Hall, a dormitory, gaily hued cushions added color to the monotony of the brick edifice, and here and there an upthrown casement allowed a white sash-curtain to wave lazily in the breeze of a mild March afternoon. As the two boys turned in at the first gate, under the modest sign announcing “Hillman’s School—Entrance Only,” Laurie broke the short silence.

“What are you doing this afternoon?” he asked.

“I don’t know. There isn’t much a fellow can do except read.”

“Or study,” supplemented Laurie virtuously. “Better come along and watch practice a while.”

But Ned shook his head. “Not good enough, old-timer. That baseball cage is too stuffy. Guess I’ll wander over to the field and see if there’s anything going on.”

“There won’t be. They say the ice has gone to mush. Listen. If you see Kewpie, tell him I died suddenly, will you? And how about Polly? Shall I meet you there?”

“Yes, five thirty we told her. So-long!”

“By, old dear! Here’s where I go and lose a finger!”

Ned climbed to the second floor of East Hall and made his way along the corridor to No. 16. The door was ajar, and when he had pushed it open he discovered Kewpie Proudtree stretched at length on the window-seat. It was no unusual thing to find Kewpie in possession of No. 16, for he appeared to like it fully as well as his own quarters across the way, if not better. Kewpie laid down the magazine he had been examining and laboriously pulled himself to a sitting posture.

“Hello, Nid,” he greeted. “Where’s Nod?” It was Kewpie who had tagged those quaint nicknames on the Turner twins, and he never failed to use them.

“Gym,” answered Ned. “Practice.”

“What! What time is it? And here I’ve been wasting my time waiting for him!”

“Too bad about your time! Get your cap, and let’s go over to the field.”

But Kewpie shook his head sadly, relapsing against the cushions. “I’m not feeling very well, Nid,” he said plaintively.

Ned looked at him with more interest, wondering if it could be Kewpie’s state of health that was concerning Polly Deane. But it was difficult to associate that youth’s bulk with illness, and Ned abandoned the idea. “What’s wrong with you?” he inquired jeeringly.

“It seems to be my stomach,” said Kewpie, laying a sympathetic hand on that portion of his anatomy.

“Does, eh? Well, what have you been eating?”

“Eating? Nothing much. Well, I did have a cream-puff and a tart at the Widow’s, but I guess it isn’t that.”

“Oh, no, of course not, you silly prune! And you probably had a nut sundae with whipped cream and sliced peaches and a lot of other truck on it. Funny you don’t feel well, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t have any whipped cream,” said Kewpie indignantly. “It—it makes me bilious.”

“Well, come on over to the field. It’ll do you good.”

“I’ve been there. There’s nothing doing, Nid. The rink looks like tapioca pudding, and you can go in to your ankles anywhere you walk. Look at my shoes.”

“Yes, and look at that window-seat, you crazy galoot! Why don’t you wipe your dirty feet on your own cushions?”

“Oh, that’ll come off.” Kewpie flicked at the muddy stains with a nonchalant hand. “Say, listen. I’ve been trying to get hold of Nod all day. How long’s he going to practise?”

“Search me. They keep at it until five or a bit after, I think. What you got on your so-called mind, Kewpie?”

Kewpie hesitated and finally decided to take Ned into his confidence. “Well, it’s like this,” he began impressively. “A fellow needs more exercise than he gets along this time of year, Nid. Of course, it’s all right for you fellows who play basket-ball or hockey, but I couldn’t get into those things, and there isn’t much else to keep you fit. Now—”

“Except pastry at the Widow Deane’s, Kewpie.”

Kewpie ignored the interruption. “Well, anyway, I’ve been thinking that if I could get into baseball it would be a mighty good thing for me. Sort of keep me in training, you know. I—I’m likely to put on weight if I don’t watch out. You understand.”

“What’s your line?” asked Ned innocently. “Short-stop?”

Kewpie grinned. “Pitcher,” he said.

“Really? Why, I didn’t know you were a baseball pitcher. Ever worked at it much?”

“Sure,” said Kewpie. Then his gaze wavered and he hedged a trifle. “Of course, I’ve never tried for the team or anything like that, but last spring we had a scrub team here and I pitched on it—generally. I’ve got something, too, let me tell you.” Kewpie’s assurance returned. “All I need is practice, Nid. Why, I can pitch a drop that’s a wonder!”

“Too bad you didn’t go out for the team this year,” said Ned. “I understand Mr. Mulford won’t take any fellows on who didn’t report early.”

Kewpie’s dejection returned and he nodded. “I know,” he answered. “That’s why I wanted to get Nod to—to sort of speak a good word for me. You see, if I can show him I’ve got something on the ball and he tells Pinky, why, I guess Pinky wouldn’t want to lose me.”

“Why don’t you speak to Pinky yourself?”

“Oh, you know how coaches are. They don’t believe what you tell ’em half the time; think you’re just stringing ’em to get on the squad.”

“And, of course, you wouldn’t do that,” said Ned gravely.

“Oh, shut up,” answered Kewpie, grinning. “You don’t think I can pitch, I’ll bet.”

“You win,” replied Ned simply.

“All right, then, I’ll show you, by Joshua! You get Nod to catch me, and you’ll see. Honest, you might help a fellow, Nid, instead of joshing him. Why, say, look how I got you on the football team last fall! If I hadn’t told Joe Stevenson about you being a star half-back—”

“Yes, and you came mighty close to getting your silly dome knocked clean off you,” interrupted Ned grimly. “A nice bunch of trouble you got me into!”

“Well, it came out all right, didn’t it?” asked Kewpie irrepressibly. “Didn’t you win the old game for us with that kick of yours? Sure, you did! I’ll say so!”

“Never you mind about that, old son. If you expect me to help you get on the baseball team you needn’t crack up what you did last fall!”

Kewpie looked momentarily pained, but perhaps he was accustomed to the ingratitude of human nature. Anyway, he arose with careful deliberation from the window-seat, an inquiring palm laid against his stomach, and smiled forgivingly down on Ned. “Well, I’ve got to be going back,” he announced. “Tell Nod I’ll be in about six, won’t you? And—er—say, you don’t happen to have a half-dollar you don’t need right away, I suppose.”

“I might,” answered Ned, reaching into a pocket. “Going to bribe your way into baseball, you fat rascal?”

“No, but I went off without paying for the stuff at the Widow’s, Nid; clean forgot all about it, and—”

“Kewpie, don’t lie, or you won’t get this!”

Kewpie grinned. “Well, I didn’t exactly forget it, maybe, but it—it sort of passed out of my mind at the moment. You understand. I really ought to go back there and pay it, Nid.”

“That’s all right. I can save you the trouble. I’m going down there myself pretty soon. How much is it?”

“Twenty cents,” faltered Kewpie.

“Fine! Then you won’t need the other thirty, old son.”

There was deep reproach in Kewpie’s face as he went out.

CHAPTER III
THE “A. R. K. P.” IS FORMED

Few customers patronized the little blue shop on Pine Street between five and six. Hillman’s discouraged the consumption of sweets so close to the school supper-hour, and, while there was no rule against it, the fellows felt themselves more or less on honor to observe the doctor’s frequently expressed wish. Neighbors ran in at intervals for a loaf of bread or cake or ten cents’ worth of whipped cream, but for the most part, as six o’clock approached, the bell tinkled infrequently. Consequently the conference held this afternoon in the Widow Deane’s sitting-room, which was also kitchen and dining-room and parlor, was almost undisturbed. The conference was participated in by four persons, Polly, Ned, Laurie, and Mae Ferrand. Mae’s presence had been unforeseen, but as she was Polly’s particular chum and, as Laurie phrased it, “one of the bunch,” it occasioned no embarrassment. Mae was about Polly’s age and perhaps a bit prettier, although, to quote Laurie again, it all depended on whether you liked light hair or dark. Mae’s hair was pure sunshine, and her skin was milk-white and rose-pink; and, which aroused Polly’s envy, she never freckled.

As the four had known each other since autumn there was no stiffness apparent in either speech or action. Ned lolled back in the comfortable old patent rocker, with his legs over one arm of it, and Laurie swung his feet from the table, secure in the knowledge that Polly’s mother was up-stairs. Laurie had a weakness for positions allowing him full liberty for his feet. Polly was talking. She and Mae, arms entwined, occupied the couch between the windows. A shining kettle on the stove hissed cozily, and a big black cat, Towser by name, purred in Ned’s lap as he scratched her head.

“There’s something wrong with him,” stated Polly convincedly. “I’ve noticed it for quite a while, more than two weeks. He looks dreadfully gloomy and unhappy, and he—he’s absent-minded, too. Just this afternoon he went off without thinking a thing about paying for a sundae and some cakes he had.”

Ned grinned but said nothing. Laurie winked gravely.

“And that’s another thing,” continued Polly. “It’s perfectly awful the way he eats sweet things, Laurie. He comes in every day and, if I’d let him, he’d make himself sick with cream-puffs and tarts and candy. It just seems as if he didn’t care what happened to him, as if he was—was desperate! Why, he told me to-day that maybe he wouldn’t play football any more!”

“I guess he was just talking,” said Mae.

“I don’t think so.” Polly shook her head. “He acts funny. Haven’t you noticed it, Laurie?”

“Yes, but he always did act funny. He’s a nut.”

“No, he isn’t; he’s a real nice boy, and you oughtn’t to talk like that. He’s unhappy, and we ought to help him.”

“All right,” agreed Laurie cheerfully. “What’ll we do?”

“Well, I suppose that first of all we should find out what’s worrying him,” answered Polly thoughtfully. “You—you have to know the disease before you apply the remedy.” Polly was plainly rather pleased with that statement, and so was Mae. Mae squeezed her friend’s arm in token of appreciation. Laurie allowed that it was a “wise crack” but wanted to know how Polly proposed to make the discovery. “Far as I can see,” he added, “Kewpie’s much the same as usual, if not more so. Although, to tell the honest gospel truth, I haven’t seen an awful lot of him just recently. I’ve been sort of keeping out of his way because he’s after me to see him pitch so’s I can ask Pinky to let him on the baseball squad.”

“It couldn’t be that, do you think?” asked Polly of the room at large. “I mean, you don’t suppose he’s hurt because you’ve been avoiding him? He might think that you’d gone back on him, Laurie, and I guess that Kewpie has a very sensitive nature.”

Ned snorted. “Kewpie’s nature’s about as sensitive as a—a whale’s!”

“I don’t know anything about whales,” declared Polly with dignity, “but I do know that very often folks who don’t seem sensitive are actually the very sensitivest of all. And I am quite sure that if Kewpie thought Laurie had—had deserted him—”

“Hey, hold hard, Polly! Gee, I haven’t deserted the poor prune. I—I’ve been busy lately and—and—well, that’s all there is to it. Gosh, I like Kewpie. He’s all right, isn’t he, Ned?”

“Yes. Look here, Miss Chairwoman and Ladies and Gentlemen of the Convention, the only thing that’s wrong with Kewpie is that he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Ever since he stopped playing football he’s been like a chap who’s lost his job and can’t find another one. Of course, at first it wasn’t so bad, for Christmas vacation was coming. But for the last couple of months he’s just sort of mooned around, getting sore-headed because he couldn’t make the basket-ball team or the hockey team or anything else. Give the old chap something to do and he’ll snap out of it. He comes over here and fills up on pastry and stuff because he hasn’t anything better to do and has a sweet tooth, anyway. Laurie and I have told him often enough that he ought to cut it out, but he says he doesn’t care whether he gets on the eleven next fall or not. That’s just guff, of course. If they had spring football practice here he’d behave himself, but they don’t. Only trouble with Kewpie is he’s lost his ambition.”

After that long speech Ned subsided further into the rocker. Mae looked across at him admiringly. “I’m sure Ned’s quite right, Polly,” she declared.

“Well, I’m glad if he is,” said Polly with a sigh of relief. “I was dreadfully afraid that he had some—some secret sorrow in his life, like—like a cruel stepmother or—or a father who drank or something. If it’s only what Ned thinks it is, why, everything’s quite easy, because getting on the baseball team will be just the thing for him.”

“How’s he going to get there?” asked Laurie suspiciously.

“Why, I thought you said he wanted you to help him!”

“I did, but what he wants and what I aim to do—”

“Kewpie couldn’t play baseball, Polly,” said Ned. “Look at him!”

“But I’ve seen stout boys play baseball plenty of times,” Polly protested. “Two years ago we had a first baseman on the high school team who was every bit as fat as Kewpie Proudtree. You remember George Wallen, Mae.”

“But it isn’t only his fatness, or stoutness, or whatever you like to call it,” insisted Laurie. “He isn’t built right for baseball. Gee, think of Kewpie trying to beat out a bunt or sliding to second! Besides, hang it, I couldn’t get him on the team if he really could pitch! Pinky said positively—”

“Is he a pitcher?” asked Polly eagerly.

“No, but he wants people to think he is.”

“But that would make it lots easier, Laurie! A pitcher doesn’t have to run much, and—”

“Why doesn’t he? Don’t you think he has to take his turn at the bat sometimes?”

“But he never hits the ball,” replied Polly triumphantly, “and so he doesn’t need to run!”

“She had you there, partner,” laughed Ned.

“Well, just the same,” answered Laurie, grinning, “I’ll be hanged if I’m going to ask Pinky to let Kewpie on the squad just so he won’t be lonesome. Pinky wouldn’t listen to me, anyway.”

“You don’t know,” said Polly. “And I think you really ought to try. Yes, I do! Kewpie’s having a miserable time of it, and he’s ruining himself for football, and it’s our duty to the school to do everything we can so he won’t!”

“Say that again,” begged Ned, but Polly paid no heed.

“Besides,” she went on warmly, “we all pretend to be his friends, and I guess a friend ought to be willing to make some sacrifices for you, and it wouldn’t be very much for Laurie to get him on the baseball team and—”

“But I tell you I can’t do it!” wailed Laurie.

“You don’t know. You haven’t tried. Don’t you think he ought to try, Mae?”

“I certainly do,” said that young lady decisively.

“Don’t you, Ned?” persisted Polly earnestly.

“Not a doubt of it in the world,” answered Ned gravely.

Laurie glared indignantly at him, but Ned was looking at Towser. After a brief silence Laurie sighed gloomily.

“All right,” he said. “But I can tell you right now that it won’t do any good. Mr. Mulford said he wouldn’t take on any fellow who didn’t report for early practice, and he means it. Besides, Kewpie’s no more of a pitcher than—than I am!”

“I know, Laurie,” said Polly persuasively, “but maybe with practice, and if you showed him—”

Ned chortled. Laurie, although he wanted to smile, kept a straight face.

“Of course,” he agreed, “I might do that. Well, I’ll do it, though I’ll feel like a perfect ass when I speak to Pinky about it.”

“There,” said Polly in triumph. “I knew we could do something if we all put our heads together! And I do hope it will be all right. Kewpie’s really a very dear boy, and he certainly did wonderfully at football last fall and he’s just got to keep on. I do think, though, that we should keep this quite to ourselves, don’t you, Ned?”

“Don’t just see how we can. If Kewpie gets on the baseball squad he’s almost sure to know something about it. He’s not such a fool as he looks sometimes, Polly.”

Polly stared. “I don’t see—” she began. Then the twinkle in Ned’s eye explained. “Of course I didn’t mean that, silly! I meant that Kewpie shouldn’t know that we—that we’d been discussing him and that we had—well, conspired, Ned. Don’t you see? He might resent it or something.”

“I get you! We’ll make a secret society out of it, eh? Association for the Restoration—no, that won’t do.”

“Advancement,” suggested Mae.

“Association for the Reclamation of Kewpie Proudtree!” pronounced Ned. “And the password—”

“Association for the Degradation of Laurence Turner, you mean,” said Laurie dejectedly. “And there isn’t any password, because he won’t pass!”

“All right,” agreed Ned. “But the dues are twenty cents. Here you are, Polly. You’ve got ‘treasurer’ written all over you.”

“But—but what is it?” asked Polly, refusing to accept the two dimes that Ned proffered.

“Madam, I am settling the debt of none other than our distinguished and rattle-brained friend Kewpie. At his request. It seems he—er—he neglected to settle for the entertainment you provided him this afternoon, and, torn by remorse—”

“Oh, I knew he forgot!” exclaimed Polly gladly.

“He would,” said Laurie pessimistically. “He has a perfectly remarkable forgetory. I guess he’s the champion long-distance forgetter—”

“Don’t be horrid,” begged Polly. “With so much on his mind, it’s no wonder he—”

“On his what?” exclaimed Laurie. “Ned, did you get that? Kewpie has so much on his mind! Honest, Polly, when Kewpie takes his cap off he hasn’t—”

The kettle caused a diversion by boiling over just then, and the conference broke up.

Kewpie awaited Laurie in No. 16, and as the twins entered he broke into speech. “Say, Nod, when—”

“To-morrow morning. Half-past ten. Back of the gym,” replied Laurie promptly. Kewpie stared, puzzled.

“What?” he demanded suspiciously.

Laurie performed an exaggerated parody of a pitcher winding up and delivering a ball. Then, assuming the rôle of catcher, he leaped high off his feet and pulled down a wild one that would undoubtedly have smashed the upper pane of the further window had it got by him.

“Honest?” cried Kewpie. “Me and you?”

“No, you and me.”

“But—how did you know what I was going to ask?”

Laurie viewed him sadly. “Kewpie,” he replied, “it’s a mighty good thing you decided to be a pitcher. That’s the only position that doesn’t call for any brain!”

CHAPTER IV
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

Laurie folded Kewpie’s sweater and placed it on the ground a few yards from the gymnasium wall. “There’s your plate,” he announced. “See if you can put ’em over the middle button, Kewpie.”

Kewpie tightened his belt, thumped a worn baseball into a blackened glove, and rather ostentatiously dug a hole in the moist turf with his heel. Laurie grinned. Here on the south side of the building the sun shone warmly and the ground was fairly dry. Behind Laurie about four yards away, was a wire fence which, if Kewpie retained ordinary control of the ball, would make life easier for Ned, who sat in the embrasure of a basement window. Laurie pulled his mitten on and waited. Kewpie was at last satisfied with the hole he had dug and fitted his toe into it. Then he looked speculatively at the folded sweater and wrapped his fingers about the ball.

“What’s this going to be, Kewpie?” asked Ned. “A drop?”

“Straight ball. Just warming up.” Kewpie let go, and the ball struck the fence and bounded back. Laurie sighed and went after it.

“I’m not as young as I was, Kewpie,” he said, “and anything more than ten feet on either side of me is likely to get away. See if you can put ’em somewhere near the plate.”

Kewpie laughed. “That one got away from me, Nod.”

“Me, too,” said Laurie. “Let her come. Shoot her in!”

Kewpie’s next offering was a good deal better, and Laurie didn’t have to move to get it. Kewpie sent four or five more balls within reasonable distance of the sweater. There was no speed in them, nor were they other than perfectly straight offerings. Still, as Laurie reflected encouragingly, it was something to be able to do that much. He was not quite sure he could do it himself the first few times.

“All right, old son,” he called. “Speed ’em up now.”

But speed did not seem to be included in Kewpie’s budget of tricks. The first attempt sent the ball over Laurie’s head and likewise over the fence. While Ned, sighing, went after it, Laurie indulged in gentle sarcasms. Kewpie thumped his glove with a bare fist and smiled genially. Then the ball came back, and Kewpie began again. Laurie picked the ball from the trampled turf between his feet and viewed Kewpie questioningly.

“Didn’t you have some drop on that?” he queried.

“Sure,” answered Kewpie. “Here’s another. You watch it.”

Laurie did watch it. And it did drop. A faint, new-born respect for Kewpie as a pitcher was reflected in his voice as he said: “That’s not so poor, old thing. Where’d you learn it?”

But Kewpie was throwing his chest out now, a purely unnecessary thing for Kewpie to do, and strutting a bit. “Never you mind,” he answered. “I told you I had something, and you wouldn’t believe me.”

“That’s all right,” remarked Ned, “but you’ve got to know more than just how to pitch a drop if you’re going to put Nate Beedle out of business.”

“That’s not half so worse,” commented Laurie after the next ball had performed a very creditable drop, “but let’s see something else, old son. How about a curve just for variety?”

“We-ell,” said Kewpie, “I haven’t got curves down so well, but—” He spent a long moment fingering the ball and finally sent it off with a decidedly round-arm delivery. Laurie caught it by leaping far to the left.

“What was that supposed to be?” he asked politely.

“In-shoot,” said Kewpie, but his tone lacked conviction.

“Huh,” returned Laurie, “you ain’t so well in your in-shoot. Better see a doctor about it. Try an out, old son.”

But Kewpie’s out wasn’t any better, and, at the end of about twenty minutes, by which time Ned was the only member of the trio not bathed in perspiration, it had been shown conclusively that Kewpie’s one and only claim to pitching fame rested on a not very remarkable drop-ball. Laurie picked up Kewpie’s sweater and returned it to him gravely. “Better put that on,” he said with vast concern. “It would be awful if you got cold in that arm of yours.”

Kewpie struggled with the garment, breathing heavily, and when he had conquered it he turned expectantly to Laurie. “Well, what do you say?” he asked.

“What do you want me to say?” Laurie stared frowningly at his mitten.

“Why, you know what I asked you,” said Kewpie. “I—you—”

“But, great jumpin’ Jupiter, Kewpie, I can’t ask Pinky to put you on the squad just because you can pitch a sort of a drop! You haven’t an ounce of speed; you can’t curve ’em—”

“Well, but I haven’t had any work!” protested the other. “Gee, I guess Nate Beedle couldn’t do much better the first time he pitched!”

“But Nate knows how, you simple fish! All the work in the world won’t make you any better if—”

“Practice makes perfect, don’t it?” interrupted Kewpie indignantly.

“Maybe. Maybe not. If you don’t know anything about pitching you can practise from now until—”

“But I do know, I tell you. All I need is practice. I’ve got a book that tells—”

“Book be blowed!” exploded Laurie. “You can’t learn pitching by taking a correspondence-course, you fat-head!”

“Quit your arguing, you two,” said Ned. “Laurie’s quite right, Kewpie. He can’t recommend you to Mr. Mulford until you’ve got more to show than you’ve shown just now. But I don’t see what’s to prevent you from learning more tricks or what’s to prevent Laurie from helping you if he can. Seems to me the thing to do is for you two to get together every day for a while.” Ned was looking meaningly at his brother. “Maybe Kewpie’s got it in him, Laurie. You can’t tell yet, eh?”

“Eh? Oh, no, I suppose not. No, you can’t tell. Maybe with practice—”

“Right-o,” agreed Ned. “That’s it; practice, Kewpie. Now you and Laurie fix it up between you to get together for half an hour every morning, savvy? Maybe after a week or so—”

“All right,” agreed Kewpie, beaming. “Gee, in a week I’ll be speeding them over like—like anything!”

Laurie looked at him pityingly. “You—you poor prune!” he sighed. Ned surreptitiously kicked him on a shin and quickly drowned Kewpie’s hurt protest with, “There! That’s fine! Come on, Laurie, it’s nearly eleven.”

“All right,” answered Laurie, rubbing the shin. “See you later, Kewpie, and we’ll fix up a time for practice.” Out of ear-shot of the more leisurely Kewpie, Laurie turned bitterly on his brother. “It’s all right for you,” he complained, “but that poor fish doesn’t know any more about pitching than I know about—about my Latin this morning! It’s all right for you, but—”

“You said that before,” interrupted Ned unfeelingly. “Look here, old-timer, did we or didn’t we agree to help Kewpie? Are you or aren’t you a member of the Association for the Reclamation—”

“Sure, I’m a member! And I’m the goat, too, it seems like! I have to do all the dirty work while you stand around and bark up my shins! How do you get that way? You can catch a ball if you try. Suppose you take Kewpie on some of the time and see how you like it!”

“I would in an instant,” responded Ned, “if you’d let me, but you wouldn’t.”

“I wouldn’t!” echoed Laurie incredulously as he followed the other up-stairs to No. 16. “Say, you ain’t so well! You just try me!”

But Ned shook his head, smiling gently. “Just now, old son, you’re not quite yourself. When your better nature asserts itself you’ll—”

“Oh, dry up,” growled Laurie. “Throw me my Latin. There goes the bell!”

Kewpie took his ball back to No. 15, pulled a small paper-bound book entitled “How to Pitch” from a table drawer, and curled himself on the window-seat. Presently, as he turned the pages slowly, his usually placid countenance became troubled. Reaching for the ball, he wound his fingers about it, his eyes ever and anon traveling to the book. Finally he arose, gathered the pillows from the two beds, and set them upright against the closet door, side by side. Then he moved an arm-chair out of the way and, having fitted his fingers around the scuffed baseball as indicated in Diagram 6, let fly. Naturally, the distance was much too short to show whether or not he had held the ball correctly, but Kewpie was an optimist by nature. Several times he followed the instructions accompanying Diagram 6, not always landing the ball against the pillows, however, and then gave his attention to Diagram 7. He was very busy striving to diagnose its requirements when “Hop” entered.

Hop’s real name was Thurman Kendrick, and he had the honor of being Kewpie’s room-mate. They were both football players and of an age, but there the likeness ceased. Hop was rather small and slim, with dark hair and an earnest countenance, a description that didn’t fit Kewpie at all. Hop was Hillman’s most likely candidate for next year’s quarter-back. Fortunately, the two boys worked together quite as smoothly on the gridiron as center and quarter as they did on the campus as room-mates. Or you may put it the other way around if you like, the idea being that they were the very best of chums off the field and on. But even a chum may have to assert authority once in a while, and Hop asserted it now.

“What do you think you’re doing, Kewpie?” he demanded in puzzlement. “Practising? Well, you pick those pillows up and put that ball down or I’ll paddle you! Look here, did you get a cut in English?”

Kewpie looked blank. “Gee, no! What time of day is it? Well, what do you know about that? I just naturally—”

“You’ll just naturally get the dickens from Johnny, you silly chump,” responded Hop dryly as he dumped his books on the table. “What did you do? forget the time?”

“N-no, I—I guess I got sort of interested in this pitching business, Hop. Say, you ought to have seen me pitching drops to Nod a while back! Boy, I’ll say I made ’em eat out of my hand!”

“And you’ll be eating off the mantel if I catch you missing any more recitations! Honest, Kewpie, you haven’t got the sense of a duck. Besides, what the dickens do you want to get into baseball for? Isn’t football good enough?”

“Sure, but I can’t play football now, can I? How do you suppose I’m going to keep myself in condition for it if I don’t have some exercise?”

“I don’t have much trouble.”

“Of course you don’t, but you’re not cursed with fat, Hop. It’s a terrible thing to be cursed with fat,” he said sadly.

“It’s a terrible thing to be cursed with a fat head,” replied Hop severely. “You’ve got about as much chance of getting on the baseball team as I have of—of—” But Hop couldn’t think of a satisfactory simile and so changed the subject. “Say, what’s Nod Turner been doing to Elk Thurston?”

“I don’t know. I heard something about Elk’s bicycle, but—”

“Well, Elk’s as sore as a pup about something, and— For goodness’ sake, put that ball away before you break something! How the dickens did I ever get hitched up with an idiot like you, anyway, I’d like to know!”

“Providence was watching over you, old chap,” answered Kewpie cheerfully. “As unworthy as you are—”

“Dry up,” laughed Hop, “and see if you can keep still long enough for me to find out why Johnny gave me only eighty-four on this theme.”

“Johnny has an awful crust,” said Kewpie sympathetically. “Wonder what he marked mine. Didn’t think to ask for it, did you?”

“I did not. Shut up!”

Laurie dropped around to the Widow Deane’s about five thirty that afternoon. It was getting to be something of a habit with him. Over a glass of root-beer he narrated to Polly the events of the morning. “He’s a perfect duffer at pitching,” he summed up finally, “and I guess I won’t ever have to trouble Pinky about him.”

“But perhaps he will learn,” said Polly hopefully. “And, anyway, he’s—he’s a changed mortal already, Laurie!”

“He’s a what?”

“I mean he’s different already. He was in this afternoon, and he had just a plain soda and only one cream-puff, and he was just as jolly as anything. Why, you wouldn’t know him for the same boy!”

Somehow these glad tidings didn’t appear to endow Laurie with any great feeling of uplift. He said, “Huh,” and took another sip of his root-beer. Polly went on earnestly.

“I suppose it’s just having something to interest him, something to live for, that’s changed him. Why, even if nothing actually came of it, Laurie, we’ve already done him a lot of good.”

“Great,” said Laurie. “I guess he’s got all the good that’s coming to him, then. He will never make a baseball pitcher.”

“But you mustn’t tell him that, even if you believe it,” said Polly earnestly. “You must encourage him, you know. We all must.”

Laurie grinned. “I’ve already told him he’s no good. I guess I told him so several times. But he doesn’t believe it, so there’s no harm done.”

“Oh, you shouldn’t have,” exclaimed Polly. “Don’t you see, if he’s to be—be taken out of himself, Laurie, he must—must have faith?”

“Oh, he’s got it, all right. I’m the one who hasn’t. He thinks he’s the coming scholastic wonder of the diamond, I guess. Of course, I’m perfectly willing to help the chap and keep him from killing himself off with cream-puffs, and that sort of thing, Polly, but you’ve got to own up that it’s a bit tough on me. Think of putting in half an hour every day with Kewpie! Gee, I’ve got troubles of my own, too. That silly Elk Thurston’s got it in for me, after that trifling affair of yesterday, and there’s no working in the same cage with him. It wouldn’t be so bad if we weren’t both trying for the same job.”

“Do you mean that Elkins Thurston is a catcher, too?”

“He is if I am,” answered Laurie smiling. “More, I guess, for he did some catching last spring with the second. Still, at that, he isn’t so much better. We’re both pretty bad yet, Polly.”

“What does he do that—that you don’t like, Laurie?”

“Oh, just acts ugly and nags whenever he gets a chance. If he keeps it up I’ll crown him with a bat some fine day!”

“You mustn’t get into any fuss with him,” said Polly decidedly. “He’s a lot bigger than you and—”

“Huh, that’s why I mean to use a bat!”

“Besides, you shouldn’t have taken his bicycle. You see, Laurie, you really started the trouble yourself.”

“Yes, I suppose I did, but he shouldn’t be so touchy. Anyway, I don’t intend—”

He was interrupted by the opening of the door and the tinkling of the bell. [A frail-looking little] [woman in a queer old-fashioned dress] and a funny little flat bonnet entered and Polly went to attend to her. The two talked together across the opposite counter in low tones, and, just to show that he was not trying to overhear them, Laurie whistled softly. After a minute or two the little woman went out and Polly rejoined Laurie.

[A pleasant-faced little lady in a queer, old-fashioned dress]

“I feel so sorry for her,” said Polly with a sigh.

“What’s the matter?” asked Laurie. “Who is she?”

“That’s Miss Comfort.” Polly seemed surprised that Laurie didn’t know it. “She lives on the next corner, in the little white house that faces the park. She makes most of our cakes and pies. Don’t you remember—”

“Of course,” agreed Laurie, “but that’s the first time I ever saw her, I guess. But why are you sorry for her?”

“Because she’s got to get out of that house, and she hasn’t any place to go. And she must be almost seventy years old, Laurie. Just think of it!”

“Well, but aren’t there any other houses in Orstead? Seems to me I saw one just the other day over on Washington Street that had a ‘To Rent’ sign in front.”

“Yes, but that’s the old Cummings house, and it has sixteen rooms and rents for goodness knows what! You see, Miss Comfort had the use of the house she was in as long as her sister lived. Her sister was married and lived out West somewhere; Ohio or Iowa, I think. Well, she died last December, and now some lawyer has written her that she must vacate on the first of next month.”

“Didn’t give her much time, and that’s a fact,” commented Laurie sympathetically.

“Oh, she’s known for quite a while, but the trouble is she hasn’t a cent of money.”

“Phew!” whistled Laurie. “How come?”

“I guess she never did have any. That house belonged to her mother, and she died a long time ago and left a funny will that let Miss Comfort stay there until her sister died. She’s been getting along pretty well by making cakes and things and selling them. She makes the best cake in town, and every one buys of her. But I guess she’s never made more than enough money to just live on. I know that winter before last, when coal was so high, she shut up all the rooms except the kitchen and lived there with just the stove for warmth. And goodness knows when she’s had a new dress. I declare she’s worn that one she had on just now ever since I’ve been in Orstead, Laurie!”

“Gee, that’s tough luck for the old girl,” said Laurie. “Must be some place for her, though.”

“There’s only one place I know of,” said Polly sadly, “and that’s the poor-farm. Of course, she’ll be well taken care of, and they’ll let her go on making cake and selling it, but she hates it dreadfully.”

“I should think she might! At her age! Gee!”

“Mama and I thought of having her here, but there’s only the two rooms up-stairs, and while it would be all right for a while it wouldn’t do as a—a permanent arrangement.”

“But isn’t there any one else who could give her a home? Some one who has more room? What about the folks in her church?”

“Well, of course there’s been talk of helping her, and I’m certain quite a lot of folks will give money, but I don’t believe she’d take it, Laurie. And even if she got quite a lot, even a hundred dollars, it wouldn’t pay house-rent very long, would it?”

“A hundred dollars!” snorted Laurie. “Say, they must be a lot of pikers. Why—”

“Why, no, Laurie, they’re not. You see, they’re not very well off themselves, and the congregation isn’t a large one at all. A hundred dollars would be quite a lot of money to them.”

“So the poor old lady’s got to go to the poor-farm, eh?” mused Laurie, frowning.

“I’m afraid so,” sighed Polly. “She’s never talked to me about it, but mama said this morning that she guessed Miss Comfort had about reconciled herself. And just now she came in to apologize for not sending two cakes she had promised for this afternoon. I guess the poor dear’s too worried and upset to make them.”

“Yes, I guess so,” Laurie agreed. “I call that tough luck. ‘Miss Comfort.’ Gee, I’ll bet she hasn’t really known what comfort is, Polly!”

“Not since her mother died, probably. But she’s always been just as cheerful and happy as any one could be until just lately. She’s a perfect dear, Laurie, and I could cry when I think of her having to go to that po-poor-farm!”

Dismayed by the catch in Polly’s voice, and horribly afraid that she was really going to cry, Laurie suddenly recalled the fact that he must get back to school. “Well, I—I suppose there isn’t anything any one can do,” he murmured awkwardly. “Maybe the poor-farm won’t be so bad. I suppose it’s the idea of it that sort of gets her, eh? Well, I must be trundling along, Polly.”

Laurie gave a farewell suck at his straw, which resulted in only a gurgling sound at the bottom of his glass, and dropped off the counter.

“Well, see you to-morrow,” he announced cheerfully. “Good night, Polly.”

“Good night,” said Polly. “But you didn’t need to run away. I hadn’t any intention of cr-crying!”

CHAPTER V
LAURIE TO THE RESCUE

Laurie’s rush to get back to school did not prevent him from pausing when, having turned the corner into Summit Street and proceeded half-way along the block, he caught sight of Bob Starling in the back garden of the Coventry place. The Coventry place, which consisted of a big square house set at the Walnut Street end of a broad and deep plot of land facing the school property, had been rented by Bob’s father, who was the engineer in charge of the big new railroad bridge in course of construction near Orstead. Bob was entered at Hillman’s School as a day-student. He was sixteen years old, a slim but well built chap with a very attractive countenance. Bob’s mission in life, as he believed, was to play a great deal of tennis and play it better than any one else. In that mission he very nearly succeeded. It was tennis that was accountable for his presence just now in the back yard, as Laurie well knew.

“How soon are you going to start work?” called Laurie.

“Hello, Nod! Come on in!”

“Can’t. Nearly six. What are you doing?”

“Just looking around,” replied Bob, drawing near. “I’ve got the stakes all set. Gosh, if the ground would dry up so they could begin to dig I’d have the old court ready in a week.”

“I guess so.” Laurie nodded. “Well, a few more days like this will do the trick. Say, remember how we planned to make a pergola out of that old lumber that came out of the arbor you pulled down?”

“Yes, and we’ll do it as soon as the court’s made. Dad’s got me twenty loads of the finest cinders you ever saw.”

“Good work! Reckon you’ll be giving tennis teas in another month, Bob.”

“Before that if the weather behaves. Been over to the Widow’s?” Bob grinned faintly.

“Yes.” Laurie’s reply sounded a trifle defiant.

“How’s Polly? Haven’t seen her for days.”

“Oh, she’s holding up bravely under your neglect,” answered Laurie. Then, having avoided Bob’s playful punch, he added, “she’s sort of broke up, though, over Miss Comfort.”

“Who? Oh, the old dame that makes cake. Yes, my aunt was saying something about her at dinner yesterday. They’re putting her out of her house or something, aren’t they?”

Laurie nodded. “It’s a blamed shame, too,” he said indignantly. “Why, say, Bob, she’s over seventy! And one of the nicest old ladies in town, too. Always cheerful and happy and—and sunny, you know. One of the—er—well, a fine character, Bob.”

“Gosh, I didn’t know you were so well acquainted with her, Nod!”

“Well, I don’t know her so very well personally,” replied Laurie, “but Polly says—”

“Oh!” chuckled Bob.

Laurie scowled. “I don’t see anything very funny in it,” he protested. “A perfectly corking old lady like Miss Comfort having to go to the poor-farm! At her age! Almost eighty!”

“Hold on! She was seventy a minute ago! Who says she’s going to the poor-farm?”

“Pol—everybody! I call it a rotten shame!”

“Why, yes, so do I,” agreed Bob, “but I don’t see why you are so het up about it.”

“You don’t, eh? Well, if she was your mother—”

“She couldn’t be, Nod; she isn’t married. And I don’t believe she’s yours, either, no matter what you say.”

“I didn’t say she was,” replied Laurie a trifle irritably. “I only said—I was just trying to make you see— Gee, you haven’t any heart at all!”

“Oh, don’t be an ass,” laughed Bob. “I haven’t said anything against the poor old soul. I’m mighty sorry for her, just as sorry as you are, but I can’t do anything about it, can I?”

“No, but you needn’t laugh at her!”

“I wasn’t laughing at her, you nut! I—”

“Besides,” continued Laurie, “if every one took your attitude about—about things, saying, ‘I can’t help it, can I?’ I’d like to know what sort of a world this would be.”

“Well, hang it, I can’t!” said Bob emphatically, getting a trifle riled at his friend’s unreasonableness. “Neither can you. So why stand there and—”

“How do you know I can’t?” demanded Laurie with much hauteur. “I haven’t said I couldn’t. In fact, I—I’m going to!”

“You are?” exclaimed Bob incredulously. “How, Nod?”

The note of respect in Bob’s voice dispelled Laurie’s annoyance perceptibly. “I don’t know—yet,” he answered. But there was something in his voice, or maybe in the emphasis put on the final word, or possibly in his manner, that caused Bob to think that he did know. “Oh, come on and tell me, Nod,” he asked. “Let me in on it. Maybe I can help, eh? Gosh, I’ll say it’s fierce to use a fine old lady like that! Are you going to get up a subscription or a—I know! A benefit, eh?”

Laurie shook his head, glancing at his watch as he did so. “I can’t tell you anything about it—yet,” he replied. “But maybe—as soon as I get the details settled—I’ve got to do a lot of thinking, you know, Bob.”

“Sure! Well, listen, let me in on it, will you? I’d love to do something, you know. I always thought Miss Comfort was a mighty fine old girl—I mean lady, Nod!”

“She is,” said Laurie almost reverentially.

“Sure,” agreed Bob solemnly.

“Well, I’ll see you to-morrow. Keep it to yourself, though. I don’t want my plans all spoiled by—by a lot of silly talk.”

“I’ll say you don’t! Good night, Nod.”

When he had reached the corner it began to dawn on Laurie that, as Elk had told him yesterday, he talked too much! “Got myself into a nice mess,” he thought ruefully. “Suppose I’ve got to go ahead and bluff it out with Bob now. Wonder what got into me. No—no discretion, that’s my trouble. I ain’t so well in my circumspection, I guess. Better see a doctor about it! Oh, well—”

The next morning Laurie and Kewpie took advantage of an empty period soon after breakfast and again sought the south side of the gymnasium building. To-day Kewpie sought to demonstrate an out-shoot. He was not very successful, although Laurie had to acknowledge that now and then the ball did deviate slightly from the straight line. Sometimes it deviated to such purpose that he couldn’t reach it at all, but Kewpie made no claims at such times. He said the ball slipped. In the end, Kewpie went back to his famous drop and managed to elicit faint applause from Laurie.

Laurie couldn’t get his heart into the business this morning. Despite his efforts to forget it, that idiotic boast to Bob Starling kept returning to his mind to bother him. Either he must confess to Bob that he hadn’t meant a word of what he had said or he must think up some scheme of, at least, pretending to seek aid for Miss Comfort. He liked Bob a whole lot and he valued Bob’s opinion of him, and he hated to confess that he had just let his tongue run away with him. On the other hand, there wasn’t a thing he could do that would be of any practical help to Miss Comfort. He would just have to bluff, he concluded: make believe that he was doing a lot of heavy thinking and finally just let the thing peter out. Quite unjustly Laurie experienced a feeling of mild distaste for Miss Comfort.

In the middle of the forenoon, Bob, meeting him in the corridor, would have stopped him, but Laurie pushed by with a great display of haste, briefly replying in the negative to Bob’s mysteriously whispered inquiry: “Anything new, Nod?” After that, not having yet decided on any sort of a scheme to present to the other, Laurie avoided Bob as though the latter had measles.

At practice in the baseball cage he gave so much thought to the matter of saving his face with Bob that he made very poor work of catching and batting. He was, in fact, so detached from what was going on that even Elk Thurston’s gibes fell on deaf ears. Mr. Mulford, the coach, got after him many times that afternoon.

When practice was over Laurie fairly dawdled about the showers and dressing-room, and it was nearly half-past five when he finally set out for the Widow Deane’s, making his way there by a roundabout route that took him nowhere in sight of the Coventry place. He expected to find Ned there before him, but the little shop was deserted save for a small child buying penny candy and Mrs. Deane, who was waiting on the customer. Polly, said Mrs. Deane, had gone to Mae Ferrand’s. Laurie disconsolately ordered a root-beer and, overcoming an inclination to sit on the counter, listened to Mrs. Deane’s unexciting budget of news. He was not very attentive, although Mrs. Deane never suspected the fact, and she might have shown some surprise when he broke into her account of Polly’s concern over Antoinette, the rabbit who lived in a box in the back yard, because Antoinette hadn’t been eating well for several days, by asking suddenly:

“Mrs. Deane, is it straight about Miss Comfort having to go to the poor-farm?”

“Oh, dear, I’m afraid so.” Mrs. Deane sighed. “Isn’t it a pity? I—we did want to take her in here with us, Laurie, but I suppose we simply couldn’t do it.”

“Well, look; what about this brother of hers?”

“Brother? Why, she hasn’t any—”

“Eh! Oh, brother-in-law, I meant; the fellow who married her sister out in Ohio.”

“Iowa,” Mrs. Deane corrected. “Why, I just don’t know. When she got word from the lawyers that she must vacate the house she wrote to him, but she says he never took any notice of her letter.”

“Didn’t she write again? Maybe he didn’t get it.”

“Why, no, she didn’t. She’s sort of—well, I suppose you might say proud, but I’d almost call it touchy. She just wouldn’t write another letter, although I advised her to.”

“Well, what’s he want the house for?” asked Laurie, frowning. “Is he coming here to live in it, or what?”

Mrs. Deane shook her head. “I don’t know, but I did hear that Mr. Sparks had told some one that they were going to tear it down and put up a two-family house there.”

“He’s the banker, isn’t he? Well, I think it’s mighty funny that this brother-in-law chap doesn’t write to her. She ought to get after him again. Or some one ought to do it for her, if she won’t. It doesn’t seem to me, Mrs. Deane, that any man would want to turn his own sister-in-law into the poor-house. Maybe he doesn’t really know how she’s fixed.”

“Well, maybe so, Laurie. I’m sure I’d like to think so. But letters don’t often go astray, and I’m afraid this Mr. Goupil—”

“Is that his name? I’ll say he’s a goop! How does he spell it?”

“G-o-u-p-i-l, Goupil. A. G. Goupil, I think she said. He’s quite wealthy, or, anyway, I gathered so from what she let fall. Makes some sort of machinery. The Goupil Machinery Company is the name. I don’t suppose it would hurt him the least tiny bit to let poor Miss Comfort stay right where she is, but sometimes it does seem that the more money folks have the less feeling they’ve got. I don’t know as I’d ought to say that, either, for—”

“Do you know what place in Iowa he lives?”

“Why, I did know, Laurie, but I don’t recall it now. It was a sort of funny name, though I’ve heard it lots of times.”

“Was it—was it—” Laurie realized blankly that he couldn’t remember the name of a single town or city in Iowa. Mrs. Deane watched him expectantly. Laurie concentrated hard and, at last, “Was it Omaha?” he asked. Then, as Mrs. Deane shook her head, “anyway,” he added, “that’s in Nebraska, come to think of it.”

“It seems to me,” mused Mrs. Deane, “that it was a—a sort of Indian name, like—like—”

“Sioux City!” shouted Laurie.

“That’s it,” agreed Mrs. Deane, quite pleased. “I don’t see how you ever thought of it. Sioux City, Iowa; yes, that was it.”

Laurie was writing on the back of a piece of paper with his fountain-pen. “Look here, Mrs. Deane,” he said eagerly, “why don’t we write to this Goop ourselves, if she won’t? Or why don’t we telegraph him? That would be better, because folks always pay more attention to telegrams than they do to letters. Only”—Laurie’s face clouded a trifle—“I wonder how much it costs to Sioux City.”

“Why—why—,” began Mrs. Deane a little breathlessly, “do you think it would be quite right? You see, Laurie, maybe I’d ought to consider what she told me as confidential. I’m not sure she would like it a bit, she’s so sort of touch—proud.”

“Well, you stay out of it, then,” said Laurie resolutely. “I’ll attend to it myself, and if there’s any blame, why, I’ll take it. But I certainly do think that some one ought to—ought to do something, Mrs. Deane. Don’t you?”

“Well, I suppose they ought, Laurie, maybe. But perhaps it’s taking a good deal on yourself—I mean—”

“She needn’t know anything about it unless Goop comes across with an answer, and what she doesn’t know isn’t going to hurt her. You leave it to me, and don’t say anything about it to Miss Comfort. I’ll send this Goop guy a telegram that’ll wake him up. He ain’t so well in his goop. He ought to see—”

“Hello!”

That was Polly, to the accompaniment of the tinkling bell in the next room.

“Don’t tell Polly!” hissed Laurie, and Polly’s mother somewhat blankly nodded agreement.

“We’ve been talking about Miss Comfort,” announced Laurie as Polly joined them.

“Oh, is there anything new, mama? Has she heard from the lawyers again?”

“Not that I know of,” answered Mrs. Deane. “I haven’t seen her yet. She said she’d bring over those cream-puffs and the layer-cake, but she hasn’t.”

“Shall I run over and ask about them?”

“N-no, I don’t think you’d better, dear. I dare say she’s just too upset to get things baked. I know myself how contrary ovens will act when you can’t give your whole mind to them. Maybe she’ll be over in a little while.”

Miss Comfort remained the subject of conversation for another ten minutes, and then Laurie, suddenly realizing that it was alarmingly close to dinner-time, winked meaningly at Mrs. Deane, said good night, and bolted. This time he made no attempt to avoid Bob Starling. Bob, however, was not in sight as Laurie sped by the big house.

“I’ll telephone him to come over after dinner,” reflected Laurie. “I sort of promised to let him in on it. Besides, I’ll bet it costs a lot to telegraph to Iowa!”

CHAPTER VI
LAURIE TALKS TOO MUCH

But Laurie didn’t have to telephone to Bob. Bob was waiting in No. 16 when the twins returned from supper. There had been no opportunity to take Ned into his confidence in dining-hall, and, since Laurie wouldn’t have thought of embarking on even the most inconsequential enterprise without his brother’s aid, the first step, as he now saw it, was to put Ned in possession of the facts. So, closing and locking the door in the manner of a conspirator, Laurie faced the eager Bob and the mystified Ned and began the recital of the pathetic story of Miss Comfort. And, as Laurie told it, it certainly was pathetic. Having found, as he believed, a way of making good his boast to Bob the day before, he set out determinedly to win his hearers to the cause. He not only wanted moral aid and counsel but pecuniary assistance in the matter of that telegram to Sioux City! So he made a very moving story of it, picturing Miss Comfort as a penniless and hard-working little woman battling heroically against the tides of adversity with unfaltering courage, Mr. Goupil as a monster of cruelty, and Mr. Goupil’s lawyer as a fiend in human form. Miss Comfort’s age was now given as “over eighty,” an estimate that caused Bob to gasp. Laurie even attempted to dwell on the horrors of existence for a well bred lady like Miss Comfort on the poor-farm. But, never having had close acquaintance with such an institution, he had to confine himself to generalities and dark insinuations, and, discovering that his audience was not as much impressed as he meant them to be, he wisely switched back to Miss Comfort herself and told how in the winter, too poverty-stricken to buy coal for the furnace, she lived in the kitchen, while her brother-in-law, rolling in riches, gave her no thought.

Ned, who, at the beginning of the narrative, had worn a smile of careless, tolerant amusement, was soon frowning troubledly. Then indignation swelled within him, and he glowered darkly upon Laurie as though the latter was all to blame for Miss Comfort’s plight. Bob appeared moved almost to tears. As an orator Laurie did himself proud on that occasion. By the time he had finished he was almost as much moved as his hearers.

There had been, of course, interruptions, but they had been few, and Laurie had waved them aside. Now, at the end, both Ned and Bob wanted many things explained to them. Thanks, however, to his talk that afternoon with Mrs. Deane and, later, with Polly, Laurie was in a position to answer all questions promptly and lucidly. When, as infrequently occurred, his knowledge was insufficient, he answered just the same. He grudgingly struck off ten years from Miss Comfort’s age at Bob’s behest, but to all other statements he clung tenaciously.

“Another thing I don’t understand,” said Ned, “is why some of the folks she knows don’t give her a home. There must be lots of people in Orstead who would be glad to take her in.”

“What good would that do?” asked Laurie. “They might give her a room to sleep in, but how would she live? You know perfectly well that they wouldn’t be willing to let her use their kitchen to make her cakes and things in. And if she doesn’t make cake and sell it she can’t buy food or clothes—”

Laurie paused, suddenly remembering that he had neglected to mention the pathetic fact that Miss Comfort had worn the same dress for years and years. He wished he hadn’t forgotten that, and he wondered if it was too late now to bring it in.

“Well, I’ll say it’s mighty hard luck for the poor woman,” said Ned finally, “but I’m blessed if I can see what any of us can do. If you’ve got any silly idea in your head that Bob and I are going to buy a house for Miss Comfort to spend the rest of her days in—”

“Don’t be an ass,” begged Laurie.

“All right, but why the locked door, then? And why all the—the talk about it?”

“Nod’s got a scheme,” said Bob, and he beamed trustfully at Laurie.

Ned grunted suspiciously. “Bet you it calls for money,” he said.

“It doesn’t,” replied Laurie. “At least, only a few pennies. The price of a telegram to Sioux City, Iowa, and, divided among the three of us, that won’t amount to anything, I guess.”

“Sioux City, Iowa?” exclaimed Ned. “What for? Why not send it to New York? It wouldn’t cost nearly so much.”

“Because, you blithering idiot,” responded Laurie, “this Goop fellow doesn’t live in New York. He lives in Sioux City.”

“Mean you’re going to telegraph to him?” asked Bob excitedly. “What are you going to say?”

“Count me out,” said Ned. “This isn’t our affair at all, and you’ll get yourself in trouble if you butt in on it.”

Laurie viewed his brother disappointedly and sighed. Now he would have to start all over again! “Gee,” he said sadly, “I thought you had a heart, Ned.”

“I have,” answered Ned. “And I’ve got some common sense, too.”

“Sure, but now listen, will you? I talked it all over with Mrs. Deane and Polly, and they agreed that—well, Mrs. Deane did, anyhow—that if Miss Comfort wouldn’t write to her brother-in-law some one ought to do it for her. And—”

“Glad Polly had some sense, if you hadn’t,” said Ned.

“Polly wasn’t there then. Now, listen, will you?”

“Yes, let him tell you, Ned,” begged Bob.

“Gosh, I am listening! But I don’t hear anything but piffle, and—”

“It isn’t piffle, you stubborn chump. Some one’s got to do something, haven’t they? You don’t want to see that poor old lady dumped right out on the sidewalk, do you? At her age? Nearly—” Laurie stifled “ninety” and substituted “eighty.” “Gee, I supposed you’d be glad to help, instead of—of throwing obstacles in the way. Gee, supposing she was your aunt or—or something—”

“She isn’t,” said Ned briefly.

“Well, she might be. If she was—”

“I guess she’s somebody’s aunt,” said Bob feelingly.

“Oh, shut up! I’d like to help her, of course, you idiots, but I don’t see where we have any right to butt in and—”

“That’s what I’m trying to explain to you,” interrupted Laurie. “If you’ll just listen a minute—”

Ten minutes later Ned capitulated. Two minutes after that the three boys were busy concocting a telegram to send to Mr. Goupil in Sioux City, Iowa. It was decided that each should compose what he considered the proper message and that they would subsequently write a fourth draft comprised of the best points of each. So they each set to work with pencil and paper and furrowed brows, and for several minutes all was very still in No. 16, East Hall. Having given the matter some previous thought, Laurie naturally finished first. Then Bob’s composition was laid on the desk, and finally, considerably later, Ned’s.

Laurie read them aloud, Bob’s first. Bob’s was as follows:

“A. G. Goupil,
“Goupil Machinery Co.,
“Sioux City, Iowa.

“What’s the big idea turning your sister-in-law into street at her age? You ought to be ashamed.”

“Gee,” laughed Laurie, “you don’t mind how many words you use, do you?”

“You do it in less,” challenged Bob indignantly.

“I have. Here’s Ned’s:

“Sister-in-law to be turned out of home unless you come to rescue immediately.”

“Sounds as though you meant your own sister-in-law,” commented Laurie. “That’s not bad, though.”

“Sounds all right to me,” said Ned. “Let’s hear yours.”

“Is Miss Comfort being evicted from house by your order? Public opinion in arms. Answer.”

“Huh,” said Ned, “public opinion can’t be ‘in arms,’ you silly chump.”

“That’s only two words less than mine,” said Bob.

“Well, we’ll see if we can’t get it into ten,” replied Laurie untroubledly. “Now then!” He took up his pencil again. “We might say ‘Comfort’ instead of ‘Miss Comfort,’ but it doesn’t sound quite respectful.”

“Leave out ‘from house,’” suggested Bob. “He will understand that she isn’t being evicted from the stable!”

“That’s so! ‘Is Miss Comfort being evicted by your order? Public opinion—er—’”

“‘Against it,’” offered Ned.

“‘Opposed,’” said Bob.

“I’ve got it!” exclaimed Laurie, erasing and starting a new draft. “How’s this? ‘Have you authorized eviction aged sister-in-law? Orstead indignant. Answer immediately.’ That ought to fetch him! Only ten words, too!”

“How about sister-in-law?” asked Bob. “Will they call it one word or three?”

“One, of course. Or ‘aged relative’ might do just as well. ‘Orstead indignant’ will give him a jolt, I’ll bet!”

“What are you going to sign it?” asked Ned anxiously.

Laurie hadn’t thought of that. Bob suggested “Friend,” but Ned reminded him that if they expected to get a reply they’d have to give more of an address than that. Laurie took a deep breath and leaped the Rubicon. He signed “Laurence S. Turner” boldly and drew a heavy mark under it for emphasis. Ned shook his head doubtfully, but Bob was thrilled.

“He will probably think you’re one of the town’s leading citizens,” he chuckled.

“Well, so I am,” answered Laurie, “in this affair. Now we’ll go down and get it off at night-rates.”

“Say,” said Ned, “we’re a set of dumb-bells! We could have sent a night-letter of fifty words for the same price.”

“That’s so,” admitted Laurie. “I think a night-letter costs a little more, though, doesn’t it? Anyway, this is more—more succinct. It sounds more businesslike. What do you think?”

They agreed that it did, and presently, a fresh copy of the message in his pocket, Laurie led the way from the room, followed by the others. The languid youth who accepted the telegram at the office appeared to hesitate over “sister-in-law,” but he made no objection to its inclusion as one word, and he brightened perceptibly as the sense of the message percolated in his mind. He looked curiously at the three boys, re-read the message, and then shook his head incredulously.

“Sick ’em, Prince,” he murmured.

The cost of the telegram was less than Laurie had dared hope it would be, and in the first moment of relief he magnanimously offered to pay a full half. Fortunately for his purse, though, the others insisted on sharing equally, and, the second moment having now arrived, Laurie allowed them to do it.

Returning to school, Ned was preyed on by doubts. Now that the telegram was an accomplished fact, he spoke dismally of the laws concerning libel. When Laurie refused to be concerned he wanted to know what they were to do if Mr. Goupil wired back that he had authorized Miss Comfort’s eviction. Laurie wasn’t prepared to answer that question. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he replied with dignity.

As a matter of fact, Laurie didn’t intend to do anything in such a case. He had saved his face, and that was sufficient. After this he meant to refrain from too much talking and keep out of affairs that didn’t concern him. Unfortunately, as he was to discover, it is frequently easier to start than it is to stop, and to make good resolutions than to follow them!

As he secretly considered the episode ended, Laurie would have put Miss Comfort and Mr. A. G. Goupil completely out of his mind for the rest of the evening if Ned hadn’t insisted on speculating as to the effect of the telegram on the addressee. Ned just couldn’t seem to let the subject alone. Laurie became very much bored, and when Ned, later, came out with the brilliant suggestion of having Miss Comfort added to the school faculty as professor of pastry Laurie threw a book at him.

The following morning Kewpie was absolutely exasperating when they met beside the gymnasium. He had brought his precious book with him and insisted on pausing between pitches to study diagrams and directions, occasioning long waits and leaving Laurie with nothing to do save indulge in feeble sarcasms that affected Kewpie no whit. Kewpie was struggling with what he earnestly told Laurie was an out-drop. Laurie sarcastically replied that Kewpie was at liberty to call it anything he pleased, out-drop, floater, in-shoot, or fade-away; they all looked the same to him when Kewpie pitched ’em! Kewpie looked almost hurt, and Laurie recalled Polly’s injunction not to discourage the aspirant for pitching honors, and so presently told Kewpie that one of his offerings “looked pretty good.” After that Kewpie cheered up a lot and pitched a ball high over the back-stop.

All that day Laurie looked for a telegram. It was, he thought, inconceivable that the Goop guy, as he privately called Mr. A. G. Goupil, should delay in answering such a communication, and when, after school was over for the day, no telegram had been delivered at East Hall, he hurried down to the telegraph office and made inquiries. The man in charge, who was not the one who had been on duty the evening before, went to a deal of trouble before informing Laurie that no message had been received. Going back, Laurie pondered. It might mean that Mr. Goupil had chosen to communicate with his lawyer instead of him, Laurie. Or it might mean that Mr. Goupil was taking time to consider the matter. Laurie dismissed the business from his mind, and, although well ahead of time, went over to the gymnasium and leisurely donned his baseball togs. There had been talk of getting out on the field to-day, but the turf was still a little too soft.

In the baseball cage four other early arrivals were on hand; Nate Beedle, Hillman’s first-choice pitcher, Captain Dave Brewster, third baseman, Gordon Simkins, in-field candidate, and Elkins Thurston. The last two were passing, while Beedle and Brewster sat on the floor with their backs against the wire.

“Hello, Nod!” greeted Nate. “Hear you’ve started a kindergarten for pitchers, sonny.”

Nate was a nice chap, and Nod didn’t mind being “ragged” by him a bit. “Yes, that’s so,” Laurie agreed. “Want to join?”

The others laughed; all save Elk. Elk, tossing the ball back to Simkins, sneered, “The way I got it, Proudtree’s trying to teach Turner how to catch!”

“Fact is,” replied Laurie, “it’s sort of mutual. Kewpie’s improving his pitching, and I’m improving my catching.”

“Can he pitch at all?” asked Dave Brewster.

“Kewpie? Well, he hasn’t much just now, but—”

“But you’re teaching him the trick, eh?” jeered Elk. “Say, Nate, you’d better watch out or you’ll lose your job.”

Nate laughed good-naturedly. “That’s right. I’ll say one thing, though. If Kewpie could pitch the way he can play center I’d be worried. Does he think he can get on the squad, Nod?”

“Guess he’d like to.”

“He’s got a swell chance,” said Elk.

“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Laurie. “They took you on.”

“Is that so? Don’t get fresh, youngster. I suppose you think you’ve got such a pull with Pinky that he’ll take on any fellow you recommend. Say, Nate, can’t you just see Proudtree running bases?” And Elk laughed vociferously.

Laurie, just at present inclined to resent anything that Elk said, merely on general principles, found cause for added resentment now. Kewpie was both friend and pupil, and consequently disparagement of Kewpie was disparagement of him. Simkins’s remark that Kewpie had shown pretty good speed on the football field was cut into by Laurie with:

“He isn’t out to become a sprinter, Elk. He’s going to be a pitcher. You don’t expect a pitcher to be much of a hand on the bases. As for his chance of getting on the squad, well, when I get through with him I guess he can have a place if he wants it.”

“When you— Oh, my sainted aunt!” cried Elk. “When you get through with him! What do you know about pitching, I’d like to know? You’re a swell teacher, you are! You never caught behind the plate until two or three weeks ago.”

“What of it? That doesn’t prevent me from knowing a natural-born pitcher when I see him. And if—”

“Natural-born pitcher! Kewpie Proudtree? Don’t make me laugh! I’ll bet he can’t pitch a straight ball!”

“Can’t, eh? Listen, Elk. Kewpie’s a better pitcher right now than you are a catcher. If he wasn’t I wouldn’t bother with him.”

“Oh, piffle! He can’t pitch and you can’t teach him, kid. And as for catching, if I dropped every ball that comes over I wouldn’t be shooting my mouth off, you fresh guy!”

“I get my glove on ’em, and that’s more than you do, Elk, old son. And if you think I don’t know what I’m talking about when I say that Kewpie’s got the making of a pitcher, why, you just keep your eyes open.”

“Sure! You’re going to have him on the squad next week, I suppose!”

“No, not next week, but I’ll tell you one thing. He will be pitching for this team before the season’s over!”

“What!” It was a chorus of blank incredulity. Then there was laughter, through which struggled Nate’s voice saying, “Nod, you’re as crazy as a coot!” The burst of merriment acted on Laurie somewhat like a wet sponge on the face of a sleeper. He awoke suddenly to the enormity of his assertion, and caution urged him to prompt retraction, or, at least, compromise. But there was Elk Thurston grinning and sneering, his very attitude a challenge. Laurie swallowed hard and summoned a smile of careless ease to his countenance.

“You heard what I said,” he remarked calmly.

Then Coach Mulford came in, and the die was cast. Laurie waved a nonchalant hand to Dave Brewster. In appearance he looked as care-free and untroubled as any person there, but to himself he was saying bitterly, “There, you poor fish, you’ve been and gone and done it again!”

CHAPTER VII
POLLY APPROVES

Practice over, Laurie set out to find Ned. He was very low in his mind, was Laurie, and he wanted comfort in the worst way. But Ned wasn’t in the room. The door of No. 15, across the corridor, was half ajar, and through it issued the voice of Kewpie. “That you, Nid?” inquired Kewpie. “Say, come in here. I’ve—”

“No!” replied Laurie emphatically as he hurried, toward the stairs. Kewpie Proudtree was the last person in the whole world he wanted to hold converse with just then. In fact, he wasn’t sure that he would be able to control himself in Kewpie’s presence. Murder, he reflected gloomily, had been committed for less cause than he had!

He set out toward the Widow Deane’s, going the long way around, since he had no heart for Bob Starling’s questions and surmises regarding Mr. A. G. Goupil. He had so thoroughly forgotten that flinty-hearted person that he had not even looked on the table in No. 16 to see if the telegram had arrived, and only the thought of encountering Bob had reminded him of it. Turning into Garden Street, he heard some one call: “Oh, Ned! Oo-ee!” It was no new thing to be mistaken for Ned. During the first two months, or thereabouts, of their stay at Hillman’s, he and Ned had been daily, hourly, almost constantly mistaken one for the other, and even to this moment such mistakes were not uncommon, which, considering the fact that the twins were as alike as two peas, was not unnatural. He wasn’t Ned, but he turned to see who was calling. It proved to be Mae Ferrand. She was on the opposite side of the street waving to him. Laurie crossed with little enthusiasm.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m looking for him, too, Mae.”

“Oh, it’s Laurie!” she exclaimed. “I do wish you boys wouldn’t dress just alike!”

“We don’t,” said Laurie somberly. “He’s wearing brown stockings, and I’m wearing green.” He looked down at them. “Sort of green, anyway.”

“Just as though any one could tell you by that,” laughed Mae. “Are you going to Polly’s?”

Laurie acknowledged that he was, and they went on together. “Isn’t it too bad about that poor, dear little Miss Comfort?” asked Mae. “Polly told you, didn’t she?”

Laurie nodded. “Yes,” he answered. “Yes, it is too bad. At her age, too. Eighty-something, isn’t she?”

“Why, no, of course not! The idea! She can’t be a day over sixty-five.”

“Oh!” Laurie sounded a trifle disappointed. “Well, that’s different, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” agreed Mae without, however, quite getting his point of view, “but it doesn’t make it much easier for her, I guess.”

“N-no.” Laurie was acquiring something close to distaste for the subject. “Well, something may turn up,” he added vaguely, “before the first of the month.”

“I hope so,” said Mae. But she didn’t sound hopeful. Laurie was glad when she changed the subject with her next remark, although he could have chosen a more welcome one: “Polly says that the—the conspiracy is working just beautifully, Laurie. She says that Kewpie Proudtree is quite like another boy the last day or two. Is he doing any better with his pitching?”

Laurie turned and regarded her balefully. “Better? No, and he never will,” he answered disgustedly. “Why that poor prune couldn’t pitch ball if—if—” He stopped, suddenly recalling his statements made in the cage a scant hour and a half since. He felt rather confused. Mae nodded sympathetically.

“Well, I think it’s darling of you to take so much trouble with him,” she said. “Sometimes I think that friendship means so much more with boys than it does with girls.”

“Friendship!” blurted Laurie.

“Why, yes, don’t you call it friendship? Every one knows what great pals you and Kewpie have been all winter. I think it’s perfectly lovely!”

“Huh,” growled Laurie.

“For goodness’ sake, what is the matter with you to-day?” asked Mae concernedly. “You’re—you’re awfully funny!”

Laurie summoned a mirthless and hollow laugh. “I’m all right,” he replied, “only I—I’ve got a lot of things to think of just now, and—”

Further explanation was spared him, for just then they reached the shop and Laurie opened the door with a sigh of relief. Ned was there, and so were Polly and Mrs. Deane. Laurie morosely declined the offer of a soda, slung himself to a counter, met the surprised and mildly disapproving gaze of the Widow, and got down again. The talk, interrupted by their arrival, began once more. Of course it was about Miss Comfort. (Mrs. Deane had been to see her that forenoon.) She hadn’t heard again from the lawyer or from her brother-in-law, and she had begun to pack her things. Laurie felt Ned’s gaze on him and turned. Ned’s look was inquiring. Laurie didn’t know what he meant by it, and frowned his perplexity. Ned worked around to him and whispered in his ear.

“Did it come? Did you get it?” he asked.

“Get what?”

“Shut up! The telegram, you chump!”

“Oh! No, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think—” began Ned in impatient sibilation.

“What are you two whispering about?” inquired Polly.

“Oh, nothing,” answered Ned airily.

“Ned Turner, don’t tell fibs,” said Polly severely. “There’s something going on that we don’t know about, Mae. Mama’s in on it, too. I can tell. She can no more hide a secret than she can fly. And I don’t think,” ended Polly with deep pathos, “that it’s very nice of you to have a secret from Mae and me.”

Ned looked concerned and apologetic. He viewed Laurie inquiringly. “Shall we tell them?” he asked. Laurie shrugged.

“I don’t care,” he answered moodily.

“Oh, of course, if you don’t want us to know,” began Polly very haughtily. Laurie managed a most winning smile.

“Of course I do,” he assured her. “I—I was going to tell you, anyhow.”

Polly didn’t look wholly convinced, but, “Well?” she said. “Go on and tell, then.” Laurie waved toward Ned.

“Let him do it,” he said.

So Ned confessed about the telegram to Mr. Goupil, taking rather more credit to himself than, perhaps, the facts warranted—something that might have brought a protest from Laurie had that youth been any longer interested in what to him seemed now a closed incident. Polly exclaimed applaudingly; Mae clapped her hands; and Mrs. Deane, proud of the fact that for once in her life she had managed, if only for a few short hours, to keep something secret from her daughter, beamed. Then praise was fairly lavished on Laurie and Ned, the former receiving the lion’s share, since the brilliant idea had been born in his stupendous brain. Laurie looked decidedly bored, and the feminine portion of the assembly credited his expression to modesty.

“Oh, Laurie,” exclaimed Polly, “I think you’re perfectly wonderful! Don’t you, Mae?”

Mae was enthusiastically affirmative.

“It was just the one absolutely practical thing to do,” continued Polly. “And I don’t see how Mr. Gou—Gou—whatever his name is—will dare to go on with his disgusting plan, do you? If that telegram doesn’t make him perfectly ashamed of himself, it—it—well, it ought to!”

“Sort of funny, though,” said Ned, “that he hasn’t answered before this. If he doesn’t answer at all—well, do you think we ought to send him another, Laurie?”

Laurie shook his head. “No good,” he said briefly.

“Oh, but he will answer it,” declared Polly. “Why, he’d simply have to! His own self-respect would—would demand it!”

“Of course!” agreed Mae. “Maybe there’s a telegram waiting for you now, Laurie.”

“That’s so.” Laurie spoke with more animation. “Let’s go and see, Ned.”

“I didn’t say anything about it to Miss Comfort,” observed Mrs. Deane in the tone of one asking commendation.

“Oh, no, you mustn’t,” said Polly. “If—if nothing came of it, after all, she’d be too disappointed. Laurie, if Mr. Whatshisname still insists on—on things going ahead as they are going, what will you do then?”

“Me?” Laurie regarded her unemotionally. Then he shrugged. “Why, I guess that would settle it, wouldn’t it? Isn’t anything more I could do, is there? Or any of us?”

“Oh, Laurie!” exclaimed Mae in vast disappointment. Polly, though, only laughed.

“Don’t be silly, Mae,” she said. “Of course he’s only fooling. You ought to know Laurie well enough to know that he isn’t going to give up as easily as all that. I’ll just bet you anything he knows this very minute what he means to do. Only he doesn’t want to tell us yet.”

“I don’t, either,” protested Laurie vehemently. “Look here, this isn’t any affair of mine, and—and—”

“Just what I told him,” said Mrs. Deane agreeably. “I think he’s been very nice to take such an interest and so much trouble, but I’m sure he can’t be expected to do any more, Polly.”

Polly smiled serenely. She shared the smile between her mother and a disquieted Laurie. Then she slipped an arm around Mae and gave her a squeeze. “We know, don’t we, Mae?” she asked.

Laurie stared helplessly for a moment. Then he seized Ned by the arm and dragged him toward the door. “Come on,” he said despairingly. “Come on home!”

“Say,” demanded Ned, once they were on the street, “what in the world’s the matter with you?”

“Matter with me?” repeated Laurie a trifle wildly. “The matter with me is that I talk too blamed much! That’s the matter with me! The matter with me—”

“Yes, yes,” agreed Ned soothingly, “yes, yes, old-timer. But what’s the present difficulty? Of course they don’t really expect us to find a home for Miss Comfort, if that’s what’s biting you.”

“Well, I should hope not! But—but, listen, Neddie. Do you think Kewpie knows enough about pitching to ever amount to a hill of beans? Do you think that, if he practised like anything all spring, he could—could get on the team?”

“Why, no, of course not,” replied Ned calmly. “Haven’t you said so yourself a dozen times?”

“Yes. Yes, and now I’ve gone and said he could!”

“Who could? Could what?”

“Kewpie. Be a pitcher and get on the team.”

“Are you plumb loco?” asked Ned in astonishment.

“No.” Laurie shook his head mournfully. “No, it isn’t that. I—I just talk too blamed much.”

“Well, who have you been talking to now? Get it off your chest, partner.”

So Laurie told him. The narrative lasted until they had reached their room, and after, and when, at last, Laurie ended his doleful tale Ned looked at him in silence for a long, long moment. Finally, “You half-portion of nothing!” breathed Ned pityingly. “You—you poor fish!”

“Well, what could I do?” asked Laurie. “I wasn’t going to let Elk make me look like a fool.”

“Huh! What do you think you look like now?”

Laurie began to prepare for supper without replying. He acted as if chastened and worried. Ned watched him for a minute in frowning perplexity. At last the frown vanished. “Well, what are you going to do?” he asked.

Laurie shrugged. “How do I know? I did think that maybe somehow or other Kewpie could learn to pitch, but I guess you’re right about him. He never could.”

“No, but he’s got to!” was Ned’s astounding answer. “We’ve got to see that he does, Laurie. You’ve said you were going to make a pitcher of him—”

“I didn’t actually say I was going to do it.”

“Well, some one. You’ve said he was going to pitch on the team this season. You might as well have said that I was going to be made President. But you said it and, by heck, you’ve got to make good or perish in the attempt. The honor of the Turners—”

“Looks to me like the honor of the Turners is going to get an awful jolt,” murmured Laurie despondently. “Making a pitcher out of Kewpie— Gee, Ned, the fellow who made a purse out of a pig’s ear had a snap!”

“It’s got to be done,” reiterated Ned firmly. “After supper we’ll decide how. Hold on, though! We don’t actually have to have him a real pitcher, son. All we have to do is to get him on the team just once, even if it’s only for two minutes, don’t you see?” Ned’s tone was triumphant.

“Yes, but how can we do that if he doesn’t know how to pitch? I don’t see that that’s going to make it any easier.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Anyhow, it helps. There might be some way of faking him on there. Well, we’ve got nearly three months to do it in, Laurie, so cheer up. Let’s go and eat. A truce to all trouble! The bell rings for supper—”

“Of cold meat as chewy as Indian rupper!” completed Laurie.

“Quitter!” laughed Ned, pushing him through the door.

CHAPTER VIII
KEWPIE AGREES

“Kewpie!”

“Yeah?”

“Come on over here!” It was Laurie calling from the doorway of No. 16. The door across the corridor opened, and the somewhat sleepy countenance of Kewpie peered forth inquiringly. The hour was 9:40.

“What do you want?” asked Kewpie. “I’m just going to bed. I’m tired, Nod.”

“You come over here,” was the stern, inexorable answer. “Ned and I want to talk to you.”

“Well, gosh, I tell you I’m sleepy,” muttered Kewpie, but he crossed the hall and followed Laurie into No. 16. Kewpie was chastely clad in a suit of out-size pajamas, which were white with a broad blue stripe at short intervals. Kewpie in night attire looked about half again as large as he did when more or less confined in street costume. Laurie thrust the visitor into the arm-chair. Kewpie subsided with a long sigh and blinked wonderingly, first at Nid and then at the determined Nod. Then he placed a large and pudgy hand in the neighborhood of his face and yawned cavernously.

“What’s the matter with you fellows?” he inquired. “What are you looking at me like that for?”

“Kewpie,” said Ned, “do you honestly think you can ever learn to pitch?”

“What!” Kewpie woke up a trifle. “I can pitch right now. Who says I can’t?”

“I do,” said Laurie emphatically. “You can pitch now just about as well as a toad can fly. What we want to know is whether, if you practise hard and keep at it, you can learn.”

Kewpie looked hurt. “Say, what’s the matter with my drop-ball?” he asked indignantly. “I suppose you think you could hit that, eh? Well, I’d like to see you try it.”

“Cut out the bunk, Kewpie,” said Ned sternly. “We’re talking business now. You know plaguey well you wouldn’t last ten seconds against a batter, the way you’re pitching now. Laurie says you’ve got a fair drop, when you get it right, and that’s all you have got. You haven’t—haven’t— What is it he hasn’t got, Laurie?”

“He hasn’t got anything except that drop. He can’t pitch a straight ball with any speed—”

“I don’t want to. Any one can hit the fast ones.”

“And he hasn’t a curve to his name. About all he has got is a colossal nerve.”

“Nerve yourself,” replied Kewpie. “I don’t pretend to be a Joe Bush, or—or—”

“Can you learn?” demanded Ned. “If Laurie and I help every way we know how, if you study that book of yours, if you practise hard every day for—for two months, say, will you be able to pitch decently at the end of that time?”

Kewpie was plainly puzzled by this sudden and intense interest in him; puzzled and a trifle suspicious. “What do you want to know for?” he asked slowly.

“Never mind. Answer the question.” Ned was very stern.

“Sure, I’d be able to pitch after two months. Bet you I’d have everything there is.”

“All right,” replied Ned. “Here’s the dope. Laurie and Elk Thurston and Nate Beedle and two or three more were talking in the gym this afternoon, and Elk said you were no good and never would be able to pitch, and—”

“Elk!” interrupted Kewpie contemptuously. “He’s just a big blow-hard, a bluff, a—”

“Never mind that. Laurie said you could pitch and that before the season was over you’d be pitching on the nine. Get that?”

Kewpie nodded, glancing from one to the other of the twins, but he seemed at a loss for words. Finally, though, he asked awedly, “Gosh, Nod, did you tell ’em that?”

“Yes, like a blamed idiot I did! I guess I had a brain-storm or something. Well, never mind that now. What do you say?”

“Me?” Kewpie cleared his throat. “Well, now, look here, I never told you I could pitch on the team, did I?”

“If you didn’t you might just as well have,” answered Laurie impatiently. “You’ve been cracking yourself up for a month. Now, what Ned and I want to know—”

“Well, but hold on! How would I get to pitch, with Nate Beedle and two or three others there? Gosh, those sharks have been at it for years!”

“Never you mind how,” said Ned sharply. “That’s not the question. Laurie’s gone and put himself in a hole, and you’ve got to help pull him out. Will you do it?”

Kewpie was again silent for a moment. Then he nodded. “Sure,” he said dubiously. “I’ll do what I can, but—”

“There aren’t any ‘buts,’” declared Ned. “If you’ll take hold seriously and do your best and learn to pitch—well, fairly decently, Kewpie, Laurie and I’ll look after the rest of it. We’ll see that you get your chance somehow with the team.”

“How are you going to do it?” asked Kewpie.

Ned shrugged. “Don’t know yet. That’ll come later. Now, what do you say? Will you be a game sport and buckle into it, or are you going to throw us down? You’ll have to quit bluffing about what you can do and work like the dickens, Kewpie. You’ll have to quit eating sweet stuff and starchy things and get rid of about ten pounds, too. Well?”

Kewpie looked solemnly back at Ned for an instant. Then he nodded shortly. “I’ll do it,” he said soberly. “Let’s go.”

The next day, which was a Saturday, the baseball candidates forsook the gymnasium and went out on the field. The ground was still soft in spots, and the diamond was not used. There was a long session at the batting-net and plenty of fielding work to follow, and of course, the pitching staff unlimbered and “shot ’em over” for awhile. Beedle, Pemberton, and Croft comprised the staff at present, with two or three aspirants applying for membership. George Pemberton fell to Laurie’s share. Pemberton was not so good as Nate Beedle, but he had done good work for the team last year and he was a “comer.” Laurie, taking Pemberton’s shoots in his big mitten, for the first time since he had been transferred from the out-field to a position behind the plate, watched his pitcher’s work. Before this, Laurie had concerned himself wholly with the ball. Now he gave attention to the behavior of Pemberton, studying the latter’s stand, his wind-up, the way his body and pitching arm came forward, the way the ball left his hand. More than once Laurie became so engrossed with the pitcher that the ball got by him entirely. He even tried to discern how Pemberton placed his fingers around the sphere in order to pitch that famous slow one of his that had foiled the best batsmen of the enemy last spring. But at the distance Laurie couldn’t get it.

Pemberton was eighteen, tall, rather thin, rather awkward until he stepped into the box and took a baseball in his capable hand. After that he was as easy and graceful as a tiger. The difference between Pemberton’s smooth wind-up and delivery and Kewpie’s laborious and jerky performance brought Laurie a sigh of despair. As he stopped a high one with his mitt and quite dexterously plucked it from the air with his right hand, Laurie was more than ever convinced that the campaign on which he and Ned and Kewpie had embarked last evening so grimly and determinedly was foredoomed to failure. Gee! Kewpie would never be able to pitch like George Pemberton if he lived to be a hundred years old and practised twenty-four hours a day! Laurie almost wished that he had been born tongue-tied! Later, returning to the gymnasium, Laurie ranged himself beside Pemberton. He had provided himself with a ball, and now he offered it to the pitcher. “Say, George, show me how you hold it for that floater of yours, will you?” he said.

Pemberton took the ball good-naturedly enough. “What are you trying to do, Nod?” he asked. “Get my job away from me? Well, here’s the way I hold it.” He placed his long fingers about the ball with careful regard for the seams. “But holding it isn’t more than half of it, Nod. You see, you’ve got to flip it away just right. Your thumb puts the drag on it, see? When you let go of it it starts away like this.” Pemberton swung his arm through slowly and let the ball trickle from his hand. Laurie recovered it from a few paces away and stared at it in puzzled fashion. He guessed he wouldn’t be able to learn much about pitching that way. Pemberton continued his explanation carelessly. “You see, you’ve got to start it off with the right spin. That’s what keeps it up after a straight ball would begin to drop. Now you take the ‘fade-away.’ I can’t pitch it, but I know how it’s done. You start it like this.”

Laurie listened and looked on with only perfunctory interest. It wasn’t any use, he decided. Learning Pemberton’s stuff and teaching it to Kewpie was beyond his abilities. Besides, when he came to think about it, it didn’t seem quite fair. It was too much like stealing another fellow’s patent. Of course there wasn’t more than one chance in ten that Kewpie would progress to the stage where he might burst on the Hillman’s baseball firmament as a rival to Pemberton, but ... just the same.... The next time Pemberton let the ball go Laurie picked it up and dropped it in his pocket.

The next day, Sunday, saw Ned and Laurie walking toward the Widow Deane’s shortly after dinner was over. It had become a custom to go for a walk on Sunday afternoons, when the weather was gracious, with Polly and Mae and, sometimes, Bob Starling or some of the other fellows. To-day, however, there were indications that a late dinner was still going on at the Starlings’, and the twins didn’t stop for Bob. It had rained during the night but a warm sun had long since removed all signs of it. Along the streets bordering School Park doors and windows were open to the spring-like air. In the park the few benches were occupied, and, beyond, in the paved yard of the high school, some small youths were indulging somewhat noisily in an amusement suspiciously like baseball. Of course it couldn’t be baseball, as Laurie pointed out, since the town laws sternly forbade that game on Sundays. At the further corner of Pine Street a small white house with faded brown shutters stood sedately behind a leafless and overgrown hedge of lilac. The twins viewed the house with new interest, for it was there that Miss Comfort lived. Ned thought that through a gap in the hedge he had glimpsed a face behind one of the front windows.

“Reckon this is her last Sunday in the old home,” observed Ned. It sounded flippant, and probably he had meant that it should, but inside him he felt very sorry for the little old lady. It was not much of a house, as houses went even in Orstead, but it was home to Miss Comfort, and Ned suddenly felt the pathos of the impending departure.

Laurie grunted assent as they turned the corner toward the little blue painted shop. “Guess we aren’t going to hear from the Goop,” he said. “It’s three days now.”

“We—ell, he might be away or something,” answered Ned.

“I don’t believe so,” said Laurie. “He didn’t answer Miss Comfort’s letter, and I guess he isn’t going to answer our telegram. The old skinflint,” he added as an afterthought.

CHAPTER IX
THE AFTERNOON CALL

“Which way?” asked Ned as, a few minutes later, they went through the gate.

“Let’s go down to the river and along the road and see all the booful automobiles,” said Laurie.

“It’s not my idea of a pleasant walk,” returned Ned, “to get entirely covered with dust and then run over!”

“We’re not going to walk,” announced Polly. “Anyway, not yet. We’re going this way.” She and Mae turned toward School Park.

“Not going to walk?” exclaimed Laurie. “What are we going to do? Polly, don’t tell me you’ve gone and bought an automobile!”

“We’re going calling,” said Polly.

“What!” protested Ned. “Calling, did you say? Not much, Polly! At least, I’m not.”

“Now, Ned Turner—” began Polly.

“Oh, never mind him,” broke in Laurie. “I’ll go calling with you, Polly. I just love to go calling. Have you any one specially in mind? Or shall we just take them as they come?”

They were crossing the street now diagonally, Polly and Mae in the lead. Laurie was smoothing his hair and settling his tie smirkingly. Ned looked rebellious. “Who are we going to call on?” he demanded dejectedly.

“You’ll know soon enough,” laughed Polly. And he did, for the next instant she had pushed open a little gate between the lilac hedges and was leading the way up the short path to Miss Comfort’s door.

“Gee!” murmured Laurie. But he and Ned followed obediently and stared questioningly at Polly while somewhere at the rear of the little house, a bell jangled in response to her tug at the brown crockery knob. “What’s the big idea?” whispered Laurie to Mae, who was nearest. But Mae only shook her head. And then, with such promptitude as to suggest to Ned that he had not just imagined that face at the front window, the door opened, and Miss Comfort was giving them welcome. There were introductions in the small hall, during which Ned trod on Laurie’s foot and Laurie pushed Mae into an umbrella-stand which had once been a length of drain-pipe and which now bore a faded design of cat-o’-nine-tails and swallows; and then, somehow, they were all seated in the front parlor, Laurie, who had neglected in the confusion to leave his cap in the hall, trying to stuff it into a side pocket.

The room was not over-furnished. There was a walnut sofa covered with faded green rep across one corner, a marble-topped walnut table between the two front windows, a bookcase midway of the inner wall, a number of straight chairs placed formally along the sides of the room, and an easy-chair at each window. There were also two foot-stools covered with crewel work, one of which Ned narrowly escaped, and a brightly hued Brussels carpet. A fireplace, surmounted by a white marble shelf, was blankly, inexorably closed by a glossy black sheet of iron. Two gilt candelabra adorned the ends of the mantel, and a black marble clock, whose stumpy hands had stopped at twelve minutes to nine on some long-past day, stood squarely in the center. There was a purple and green square of embroidery on the table and a few books of unexciting appearance. Everything was spotlessly clean, immaculately neat, depressingly orderly.

Polly and Mae, as usual, crowded into one of the easy-chairs, and Miss Comfort sat erectly in the other. Miss Comfort proved to be small and rather thin, with lightish hair that wasn’t brown and wasn’t white. She had small, delicate features and dark eyes that remained very bright and clear. Miss Comfort might be nearly seventy, as Polly had stated, but there was something youthful in her pleasant face, her quick movements, and her thin, soft voice. Laurie was receiving these impressions when that thin, soft voice pronounced his name and he discovered that his hostess had turned from the girls and was looking toward him, her head pushed forward a little as if, despite their brightness, her eyes were not as serviceable as they had been.

“Mr. Laurie,” Miss Comfort was saying, “I want to thank you for your interest in my affairs. I do think it was extremely kind of you to send that telegram to my brother-in-law. Although I am convinced that nothing will come of it, I assure you that I appreciate your helpfulness.”

It was rather a precise and formal little speech, and it is probable that Miss Comfort had prepared it in advance of the occasion. It left Laurie surprised and sputtering.

“But—but—why, that’s all right—if you mean—”

Polly came to his rescue: “It was mama who told, Laurie. She really didn’t mean to, but if you knew her as well as I do you’d know that she simply can’t keep a secret, no matter how hard she tried.”

“Oh,” said Laurie. “Well, you don’t need to thank me—us a bit, Miss Comfort. I—we were mighty glad to do anything we could, and we wish there was more we might do. I guess Polly’s told you that that—er—that your brother-in-law hasn’t answered yet.”

Miss Comfort nodded. “Yes, and I’m not surprised. Mr. Goupil is a very busy man, I suppose, and I dare say he hasn’t time to—to look after all matters himself.”

“Well, if you ask me—” began Laurie indignantly.

“But she hasn’t,” interrupted Ned warningly. “I guess what Laurie was going to say, Miss Comfort, is that he—that is, we—both of—neither of us—” Laurie was smiling enjoyably—“can understand how your brother-in-law could act so—so—”

“Rotten,” supplied the irrepressible Laurie.

“I know,” replied Miss Comfort. “Perhaps I can explain a little. You might say that Mr. Goupil and I are strangers. Yes, that is scarcely an exaggeration. My sister Amanda met him in New Jersey fourteen years ago when she was teaching school there. Amanda was much younger than I and—and impulsive. I knew nothing about Mr. Goupil until she wrote to me from Chicago saying that she was married and on her way west with her husband. I was dreadfully surprised, as you can well understand, for Amanda was—” Miss Comfort hesitated, coughed and continued—“was almost fifty years of age, and I had never thought of her becoming married. In my surprise, I fear that my letter to her was not—well, quite as sympathetic as it should have been. I suppose I showed her that I was a little bit hurt because she had not confided in me earlier. That was most unfortunate, because it led to a—a misunderstanding. I tried very hard to atone, but she never forgave me, and after two years she stopped answering my letters.” Miss Comfort was silent a moment, gazing down at the thin hands folded in her lap. “I fear,” she went on at length, “Amanda gathered the impression that I didn’t approve of her husband. Well, I don’t suppose I did. I mean that I didn’t approve of him for her. You see, he was younger than Amanda by several years, and then he was a foreigner.”

“A foreigner!” exclaimed Polly. “Why, I didn’t know that, Miss Comfort.”

Miss Comfort nodded. “Yes, he was a Frenchman, Polly. Of course there are undoubtedly many most estimable French gentlemen, but it did seem to me that if Amanda had to marry she might have found a man of her own race.” Miss Comfort sighed and then she laughed apologetically. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Oh, yes, I was trying to explain about Mr. Goupil, wasn’t I? Well, you see, after Amanda was married I never saw either her or her husband. They lived in Chicago a year or so and then moved further west, and after that I lost all trace of them until I received word lately of Amanda’s death. After that came this letter from the lawyer about the house. Maybe, you see, Mr. Goupil doesn’t feel very kindly toward me, and if he doesn’t I don’t suppose I should blame him one bit.”

“This house belongs to him now?” asked Laurie.

“Yes. My mother left a will that gave everything to Amanda, but allowed me the use of this place until Amanda’s death. Of course mother never meant it the way she wrote it. She just got a little mixed up, and as she didn’t employ a lawyer to do it for her, why, it stood just as she wrote it. I’ve often wondered,” added Miss Comfort, wrinkling her forehead, “what she did mean. I suppose she meant me to live here until my death, and not Amanda’s.”

“I’ll bet you could break a will like that,” declared Laurie eagerly.

“So Mr. Whipple told me,” responded Miss Comfort. “He was the lawyer. He’s dead now. But I didn’t like to do it. It seemed kind of—of disrespectful to mother. Besides, I never had any suspicion that I would outlast poor Amanda.”

In the ensuing silence Polly and Mae gazed sympathetically at Miss Comfort, who, smoothing the old black dress over her knees, appeared lost in her thoughts. Finally:

“Well,” began Laurie. Then he stopped, cleared his throat, and said: “Look here, Miss Comfort, I’d like to ask you— It may sound cheeky— Well, what I mean is, haven’t you—that is, are you—” Laurie’s cheeks reddened as he floundered on. “Haven’t you any—any means at all? Maybe it’s none of my business—”

“No, Mr. Laurie, I haven’t,” replied Miss Comfort quietly. “There wasn’t ever much money after my father died, and mother’s will left what there was to Amanda. That was just as it should have been, for as long as I had this house I was quite all right.” She smiled gently. “But, land sakes, I don’t want you young folks to trouble your heads about me and my affairs. Troubles aren’t for the young, Mr. Laurie.”

“That’s all right,” was the dogged response, “but—but something—somebody— It doesn’t seem right for you to have to go to—to that place!”

“Why, I don’t know,” said Miss Comfort thoughtfully. “I guess lots of perfectly respectable folks have gone to the poor-farm. I dare say there’s no disgrace. And they do say that the—the institution is conducted very nicely. No doubt I’ll be quite comfortable there. And—and it isn’t as though I’d have to stay very long.”

“Oh,” exclaimed Ned relievedly, “then you expect to—” But Polly interrupted him.

“Now, Miss Comfort,” cried Polly indignantly, “don’t you talk like that! Why, goodness gracious, you aren’t old at all! The—the idea!”

“I should say not!” said Mae warmly. “The idea!”

Miss Comfort chuckled softly. “Well, I ain’t helpless yet, I know, Polly, but I’m—” she coughed daintily— “I’m getting along in years, my dear.”

“Seems to me,” exploded Laurie, “there ought to be some place in this town where you could go. Wouldn’t you a whole lot rather live in a—a—” he had started to say “barn,” but changed it to—“a—a shed than go to that poor-farm place?”

“Why, yes, I don’t know but what I would,” said Miss Comfort, “as long as it had a roof and I could go on with my work. But I’m afraid I couldn’t even pay the rent for a shed, Mr. Laurie. Now I ain’t going to let you talk a minute longer about me. Why, I’m just ashamed of myself!” She arose quickly and crossed to the door with short, firm steps. “Will you excuse me a minute?” she asked.

When she had gone the four visitors looked at each other silently. Finally, “Rotten shame, I call it,” muttered Laurie. Ned nodded agreement. Polly, whose gaze was fixed on Laurie expectantly, said suddenly: “Laurie, if you have anything in mind I think you’d ought to tell her. It might make her feel more comfortable.”

“Anything in mind?” echoed Laurie. “I haven’t. At least, only—”

Miss Comfort’s return with a dish of cake stopped him.

A little later they were outside again, walking silently away from the little white house with the brown shutters. When they were at last out of sight of the front windows Polly turned eagerly toward Laurie.

“What were you going to say?” she demanded. “You have thought of some plan, haven’t you?”

Laurie hesitated, frowning thoughtfully. “Not much of a one,” he answered. “I guess it doesn’t amount to anything. Only—well, now look here, doesn’t it seem that there ought to be some place somewhere in this town that would do for her? It wouldn’t have to be much, would it? Maybe just a sort of shed that could be fixed up and made comfortable? Or a nice stable that has rooms above it. You know some stables have quarters for the coachman or chauffeur or gardener. Maybe—”

“Why, I think it’s a perfectly stunning idea!” cried Polly. “No one thought of that!”

“But she’d have to pay rent just the same, wouldn’t she?” asked Ned dubiously. “Some rent, anyhow? And she said—”

“If we explained about her,” said Polly, “I’m sure no one would think of asking rent for just a stable attic—” Laurie’s chuckles interrupted. “Well, whatever you call it. Loft, isn’t it? Anyhow, perhaps just a—a nominal rent would be all they’d ask.”

“Why don’t we look right now and see if we can’t find something?” asked Mae excitedly.

“Why don’t we?” cried Polly eagerly.

“Just what I was about to propose,” said Laurie a bit patronizingly, “when Ned butted in. Let’s start in and do the old burg systematically. Which way shall we go first?”

Dusk had settled over Orstead when the four, footsore and weary, returned to the shop. Their quest had been fruitless.

CHAPTER X
THE COACH MAKES A PROMISE

“Turner,” said Coach Mulford, taking the vacant place on the bench beside Laurie and laying a hand on his knees, “Turner, they tell me you’re grooming a dark horse.”

“Sir?” Laurie looked blank. Pinky’s smile told him that there was a joke somewhere about, but the phrase was a new one to him and he didn’t get the coach’s meaning. Mr. Mulford laughed.

“They tell me that you’re training a new pitcher for us,” he explained. “How about it?”

Laurie reddened a bit. He wasn’t surprised that the coach knew about it, for his crazy boast and his daily work-outs with Kewpie were known all over school and he was being joked unmercifully. Those morning sessions now were being attended by something of a gallery of interested spectators who were generous with suggestions and applause. But it occurred to him now that Coach Mulford must think him rather a fool.

“I—well, I’m sort of helping Kewpie Proudtree,” he answered haltingly. “He wants to learn to pitch, Mr. Mulford.”

“I see.” The coach evidently didn’t disapprove of the proceeding. Laurie gathered that from his tones. “I see. How’s he getting on?”

Laurie shook his head. “Not very well,” he said frankly.

“Sorry to hear that,” was the grave reply. “Still, there’s quite a while yet, and I dare say we’ll manage to get along with Beedle and the others until your man’s ready.” Mr. Mulford slapped Laurie’s knee again and again laughed. Laurie laughed, too, but it wasn’t a whole-hearted laugh. Aware of the coach’s amused regard, he felt slightly resentful. After a moment he said offhandedly:

“I reckon he’ll be ready for the Farview game, sir.”

“Think so? Fine!” Mr. Mulford chuckled as he arose. “Well, let me know when he is ready, Turner.”

“If I do will you give him a trial?” asked Laurie quickly.

“What?” Mr. Mulford paused in his departure and looked back. “Give him a trial? Why, I don’t know, Turner,” he continued slowly, “but I might.”

“You—you wouldn’t care to make that a promise, would you, sir?” asked Laurie. Pinky’s round, red face smiled back as, after a perceptible pause, he nodded.

“Yes, I’ll make it a promise, Turner,” he agreed. “But, mind you, you mustn’t ask me to waste my time. If your Great Unknown gets so he can really pitch, you let me know, and I’ll look him over. But no duds, Turner!”

When, just before supper that evening, Laurie jubilantly repeated the conversation to Kewpie, Kewpie was all swelled up over that title of Great Unknown until Ned dryly remarked that most Great Unknowns never amounted to a hill of beans. Even that pessimistic utterance failed to dispel all of Kewpie’s pleasure, however.

“That’s all right,” he said. “But some of them make good, don’t they? Well, here’s one of ’em. You ask Nod if I didn’t pitch some mighty nice curves this morning.”

“Yeah,” agreed Laurie glumly, “they curved all right, but you mustn’t think that a batter’s going to step out of his box to hit your balls, Kewpie. Batters aren’t that accommodating!”

“Gosh,” complained Kewpie, “you don’t give a fellow credit when he deserves it. If you think it’s any fun going through that stunt every morning—”

“Who started it?” demanded Laurie.

“Well, that’s all right, but—”

“You’ll get a nice long rest pretty soon,” said Ned soothingly. “Spring recess’ll be along in less than two weeks, old son.”

Kewpie made no reply for a moment. Then, “Well,” he began hesitantly, “I was thinking, Nid, that maybe I ought—oughtn’t—oughtn’t to go home at recess.”

“Not go home! For goodness’ sake, why?”

“Well, I’d lose a whole week, wouldn’t I? You and Laurie will be here, won’t you?”

“Yes,” replied Ned, with a notable lack of enthusiasm. He and Laurie weren’t at all keen on remaining at school during the spring vacation, but it lasted only eight days, and as the journey to California occupied four, why, as Laurie put it, “they’d meet themselves coming back!”

“Sure,” continued Kewpie. “Well, I ought to stay, too, I guess, and get a lot of practice in. Don’t you think so, Nod?”

“Why, I don’t know.” Laurie looked startled. The prospect of seven long days with nothing to do but to catch Kewpie’s drops and curves seemed decidedly lacking in attraction. There were moments when Laurie’s determination wavered, and this was one of them. “I suppose it would be a mighty good idea, though,” he added listlessly. Ned’s mouth trembled in a smile.

“Absolutely corking, Kewpie,” he declared. “Of course, you ought to stay. But what about your folks? Won’t they expect you home?”

Kewpie nodded. “But I wrote yesterday and told them that maybe I wouldn’t be able to.”

“I’d like to have seen that letter,” chuckled Ned.

Kewpie grinned. “I just told them that I might have to stay here on account of baseball practice,” he explained innocently.

“Of course,” agreed Ned gravely. “Well, you and Laurie can have a fine old time during recess. No recitations to bother you or anything.”

“O Death, where is thy sting?” murmured Laurie.

“There is, though,” observed Ned, throwing his legs over the side of the Morris chair and eyeing Laurie quizzically, “just one complication that occurs to me. I’ve heard talk of the baseball team taking a Southern trip during recess. In that case, Laurie, I suppose you’d go along.”

“Honest?” exclaimed Kewpie anxiously. “I didn’t know that!”

“Nor any one else,” said Laurie, frowning. “Don’t you know yet when Ned’s joshing?”

“Oh,” breathed Kewpie with immense relief. “I thought maybe—”

“A swell chance I’d have of going with the team if it did go,” said Laurie. “I can’t play ball. I didn’t make a hit this afternoon. Couldn’t even see the old pill! Guess I’ll quit and go in for—for soccer or rowing.”

“Yes, rowing would be nice for you,” said Ned. “You’re so big and strong! It’s a wonder to me they haven’t grabbed you for the boat before this!”

“I’ll bet I could row as well as you, you old bluffer!”

“There goes the bell!” yelped Kewpie. “Gosh, I didn’t know it was so late! S’long!” He collided with a chair and rushed out.

A week passed, a week of ideal weather. The days were mildly warm and spring-like, and Polly’s possible snow didn’t develop. It showered occasionally, usually at night, and never enough to interfere with baseball practice. Tennis came into its own again, and Bob Starling was torn between the desire to remain at home and speed the making of the court behind the big house and the longing to go over to the school field and engage in combat with his ancient rivals. The crews were on the river daily. The education of Kewpie Proudtree as a baseball pitcher continued. Laurie regained his batting eye in a measure and talked no more of abandoning the diamond for the courts or the four-oared shells. Ned borrowed three golf-clubs from as many different acquaintances, bought a fourth, and accompanied Joe Stevenson, captain of last autumn’s football’s eleven, around the links. Mr. Goupil, of Sioux City, Iowa, continued to emulate the Sphinx, and Miss Comfort was temporarily installed in one of the up-stairs rooms at the Widow Deane’s, Polly sleeping in the room below.

This arrangement had come about as the result of an eleventh-hour hitch in the program that was to have placed Miss Comfort in the poor-farm, down the river about two miles. It turned out that gaining admission to that institution was not such a simple matter as one might suppose. There was a great deal of red tape to be untied, and the untying of it occupied the energies of several of Orstead’s influential citizens. There was no doubt that eventually Miss Comfort would reach that haven, but meanwhile there ensued a delay that might last a week—a fortnight—even longer. Bob Starling’s father, instigated by his sister, who, since the death of Bob’s mother, had kept house for them, offered very generous assistance of money. Other individuals had sought to aid, as, too, had the congregation of the little church that Miss Comfort attended. But all such offers had been gratefully and firmly declined. Hospitality the little old lady would have accepted, but charity in the form of money was, to her mind, something quite different and most repugnant. So, until the last knot in the mass of red tape had been untied, she was to remain as Mrs. Deane’s guest, an arrangement that brought as much pleasure to the Widow and Polly as it did to Miss Comfort.

Even Polly had now accepted the inevitable. That first search for a modest habitation for the exile had been discouragingly unsuccessful, as had a second and more half-hearted one, and the four sympathetic young folks had finally agreed that the situation was beyond them. If Polly was a wee bit disappointed in Laurie because of his failure to find a solution of the problem—and I think she was—she doubtless recognized the injustice of that emotion and concealed it. Laurie, once satisfied that everything had been done that could be done, philosophically banished the matter from his mind. Of course, he was just as sorry as ever for Miss Comfort, but that didn’t keep him from giving his full attention to matters of more personal interest, such as trying to beat Elk Thurston out for the position of first substitute catcher, and striving, sometimes hopelessly, to make Kewpie into a pitcher. It is always so much easier to view another’s misfortunes with philosophy than one’s own.

Hillman’s played two games during the week preceding the spring vacation and won one of them. The second, with Lincolndale High School, went to ten innings at 7 to 7 and was then called to allow the visitors to catch a train. Laurie, to his oddly mingled relief and disgust, saw action in neither of the contests. Elk Thurston took the place of Cas Bennett, the regular catcher, for the last two innings in the first encounter, but in the second game Cas worked through to the end. Laurie had to acknowledge that Elk did pretty well that Wednesday as a catcher—better, probably, than he could have done. Laurie’s modesty, though, did not keep him from telling himself that, while he might have performed less skillfully behind the plate than Elk had, he was mighty sure he could have done better at the bat. The Orstead High School pitcher, the third since the beginning of the game, had nothing on the ball, was, in fact, scarcely more of a twirler than Kewpie Proudtree, and yet Elk had swung ingloriously at the first three offerings and had failed to so much as tickle one of them. “Bet you,” thought Laurie, “I’d have fouled one, anyhow!”

The Lincolndale game was on Friday, and the next day vacation began. By noon the school was pretty well depopulated, although there remained a scattering of unfortunate fellows who, like Ned and Laurie, lived too far from Orstead to allow of a home visit, or who could not afford the trip. Kewpie had reached a compromise with his parents. He was to go home and remain until Tuesday morning. Then he was to return to school and the demands of baseball. Ned was cynical after Kewpie’s departure.

“Bet you we won’t see Kewpie again until a week from to-morrow,” he said to Laurie.

Laurie shook his head. “I don’t know,” he replied, “but I have a hunch that he will be back Tuesday. Kewpie’s taking this pretty seriously, Ned, and he’s really trying mighty hard. Sometimes I think that if only he wasn’t so outrageously like a dumpling he could do something at it!”

CHAPTER XI
ON LITTLE CROW

Mae Ferrand was not on hand the next afternoon when the twins and Bob Starling reached the Widow Deane’s. Mae, Polly informed them, had gone to Poughkeepsie to spend Sunday with her grandmother. They decided to go down to the river for their walk this afternoon, and were soon descending Walnut Street. At the station they crossed the tracks, passed the freight-shed, and went southward beside the river, blue and sparkling in the spring sunlight. Then they had to return again to the tracks and cross a bridge that spanned a narrow inlet. The inlet connected the river with a shallow stretch of marsh and water known as the Basin which lay between the tracks and the big rock-quarry. The quarry was slowly but very surely removing the hill called Little Crow, and the face of the quarry was fully eighty feet in height from the boulder-strewn base to the tree-topped summit. It was here that stone was being obtained for the work on which Mr. Starling’s company was engaged. Spur-tracks ran from the railroad to the base of the high cliff, about two hundred yards distant, and from the railroad again to the stone-walled dock wherein the quarry company loaded to lighters for water transportation. The Basin was a favorite place for skating in winter, and Ned reminded the others of several episodes of three months back.

“Remember the time Elk Thurston tried to get ashore over there by the rushes?” asked Ned. “Every time he put his foot down the ice broke and let him through.”

“And he got angrier and angrier,” laughed Polly, “and tried to hurry and—”

“Fell flat,” chuckled Laurie. “They told him the ice wouldn’t hold him over there, but he always knows a little more than any one else. And, look, there’s the old Pequot Queen over there yet. It’s a wonder some one doesn’t take her away or break her up or something.”

“Nobody knows who she belongs to, I heard,” said Bob. “The old ferry company went bust three or four years back, and the quarry company can’t touch her because she isn’t theirs. I heard they had a bill for dockage as long as my arm against the Queen, though.”

“Still, that’s the quarry dock she’s in,” said Ned, “and she must be in the way there. I don’t see why they don’t push her out and let her float down the river.”

“She’d be a menace to navigation,” replied Bob knowingly. “The law would get them if they tried that.”

“Sort of like a fellow driving an automobile into your front yard and leaving it there and going off,” laughed Laurie. “You couldn’t put it out into the street because that would be against traffic rules and you couldn’t take possession of it—”

“You could send it to a garage, though,” said Bob.

“Yes, and pay the garage bills!”

“The quarry folks could see that it got on fire accidently,” said Ned.

“It would only burn to the water-edge. The hull would be just as much in the way as the whole thing,” objected Bob.

“I hope they’ll let it stay just where it is,” said Polly. “I’m sure it comes in very handy when we come here skating. Remember that perfectly ferocious day just after Christmas, Laurie, when we were all nearly frozen and you made a fire in the—the fireplace—”

“Fireplace!” echoed Ned. “That’s corking!”

“Well, the—the—why, I don’t see why it isn’t a fireplace, Smarty. It’s the place you build the fire, isn’t it?”

“Boiler,” said Bob.

“Well, anyway, it just about saved my feet from freezing right off,” declared Polly. “And we had a lot of fun on the boat, and I hope no one will do anything to it at all!”

“Guess you needn’t worry,” said Laurie. “Looks as if she’d stay right here and rot to pieces. Guess she’s got a good start already.”

Their homeward way led them through the woods and around the slope of Little Crow Hill, at first by an old wood-road and then by devious trails through the now leafless forest. That was the nearer way, but there was a longer, more arduous, and far more attractive route that took them to the summit of Little Crow and laid the world at their feet; for from above the face of the quarry they could look for miles and miles up and down the broad river and across it and westward to the rising foot-hills of the mountains. Since to-day was as clear as a whistle and the air held that crisp quality that makes exertion a pleasure, Bob’s suggestion that they go up to the top of the hill was accepted with enthusiasm by Ned and Laurie. Polly, glancing solicitously at her dress, hesitated. But she was, in the boys’ parlance, “a good sport,” and she didn’t want to spoil their fun. So after a brief moment she, too, agreed, although with less enthusiasm, and they turned northward from the wood-road and ascended, for a time almost parallel to the railroad, a narrow path where the branches clutched mischievously at Polly’s skirt and proved that she had had cause for indecision.

Laurie led, with Polly next. For a while the going was not hard, but then outcropping boulders set the path to twisting and winding, and soon they were helping themselves upward by branches and setting their feet carefully in the moist tangles of root and moss. It was half-way up a more than usually severe stretch, when every muscle was tense, that Laurie suddenly stopped short, turned about and exclaimed “Say!” in such an unexpected and explosive burst of sound that Polly, thrown from her balance by her attempt to avoid collision with Laurie, and startled out of her wits, fell back against Ned. Only Bob’s prompt support from the rear saved the situation. The three glared at the offender in outrage.

“Say,” exclaimed Ned, “what do you want to do? Break all our necks? What’s the matter with you, anyway, stopping like that and shouting like a crazy man?”

Laurie stared back for an instant as though he neither saw Ned nor heard him. Then his gaze fell and he turned away. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“But—but what was it?” gasped Polly. “Did you see a snake or—or something?”

Laurie shook his head and began to climb again. “I just thought of something,” he said.

“Well, for the love of lime-drops!” scolded his brother. “Don’t think any more until we get to the top, you poor prune!”

They went on, but it wasn’t difficult to perceive that Laurie wasn’t obeying Ned’s injunction. If he had been he wouldn’t have stumbled over everything in his course and he wouldn’t have missed the path above the big fern-clad rock near the summit and gone wandering off into the brush all by himself until called back by the others. Ned observed him pityingly as he sheepishly rejoined them.

“We’ll have to hold you when we get to the top,” said Ned crushingly. “If we don’t you’ll probably walk right over the edge! What in the world’s got into you?”

“Nothing,” answered Laurie, an absent expression possessing his features again. “What are you stopping here for?”

“Well, there is something,” said Ned accusingly, “and I know what it is. You’ve got some crazy idea in your bean.” He turned to Polly. “He’s always like that when he thinks he’s discovered something big, like perpetual motion or—or how to make a million dollars. We’ll have to watch him until he recovers, or he will do himself harm. You go first, Bob, and I’ll keep an eye on him.”

The rest of the climb was accomplished without further incident, and they at last emerged in a small cleared space at the top of the hill. I don’t mean cleared in the sense of free from rubbish, for occasional picnic-parties had offended against nature as they have a way of doing, and the scanty grass was littered with paper and empty cracker-boxes and an occasional bottle or tin. Ned viewed the scene disgustedly.

“Funny what human hogs some folks are,” he growled, kicking an empty olive-bottle over the edge of the cliff. He paused until, after an appreciable interval, the distant tinkling sound of breaking glass met his ears. “It’s enough to make you sick. Folks who can’t stand a speck of dust on their automobile will get out and eat their lunch and leave the place looking like a pigsty. Ought to be brought back and made to eat every scrap of the mess they leave behind them.”

“Right-o,” agreed Bob, “but I don’t believe these folks were automobilists, Ned. It’s a long way up here from the road.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Ned, “whether they came in a car or walked; they’re hogs just the same.”

“Well, let’s sit down and get our breaths,” said Polly, suiting action to words. “That’s a perfectly frightful climb, isn’t it. I don’t think I tore my dress, though.” She was making inspection and looked vastly relieved as no damage showed.

“Better luck going down,” said Bob cheerfully, and Polly made a face at him as he sprawled beside Ned. Laurie had not joined them on the grass, but instead was lounging toward the edge of the cliff, his hands in his pockets.

“Laurie, please don’t go so close,” called Polly from a dozen feet away. “It makes me feel sort of squirmy.”

Perhaps Laurie didn’t hear her. He was very near the edge now, close by a pine that leaned outward at an angle, its roots clinging to the thin crust of earth that hid the rock beneath. Ned glanced toward him, and an expression of disapproval came to his face.

“He thinks he’s smart,” he said contemptuously. “He’s always liked to walk on roofs and act silly goat that way.” He raised his voice. “Laurie!”

Laurie gave a start. “Yes?” he answered. Then—well, then everything happened all at once and with incredible speed. They saw Laurie grasp suddenly at the leaning tree, saw him miss it, saw one foot disappear over the edge in a tiny cloud of brown dust, and then, in almost the same instant, Laurie just wasn’t there!

CHAPTER XII
ON THE QUARRY SHELF

There was an instant of incredulous horror on the cliff top. Then Polly’s smothered gasp broke the silence, and the two boys were on their feet. Short of the edge, Ned faltered for a moment, sick and trembling, and it was Bob who crouched on hands and knees and looked first down the steeply sloping face of rock. Beside him the earth was still trickling where Laurie’s unwary foot had broken off an overhanging crust.

For a second Bob’s gaze, fearfully searching the rocky débris far below, saw nothing. Then came a sharp cry of relief from Ned, who had now dropped beside him, and at the same moment Bob’s gaze, retraveling the face of rock, fell on Laurie.

About thirty feet below them he was, his feet set on a shelf scarcely four inches wide, his right hand stretched high and its fingers hooked over a still narrower ledge, his left hand flung outward, its palm pressed against the smooth surface. His head leaned against the raised shoulder, his forehead close to the rock. Viewed from below the quarry face looked perpendicular, as, indeed, it was farther around where the height was less, but here there was a perceptible slope, slight but sufficient to have saved Laurie from a headlong plunge to the strewn fragments at the base. His cap was gone and the miniature landslide had powdered his head and shoulders with red dust.

“Laurie!” called Ned tremulously.

For a space there was no answer. Then Laurie’s voice reached them, weak and muffled. “Yeah?”

He didn’t raise his face.

“Are you hurt?” asked Bob anxiously.

“No, not—yet.” He stopped and then added, “Scraped a bit.”

“Can you hold on until we—we—” Ned stopped because he couldn’t think just then what it was they could do.

“I reckon so,” answered Laurie. “Is there ... anything near my left hand ... I can reach, Ned?”

“No. Wait. Yes, there’s a sort of edge about six inches higher. Can you reach it? Further up. Nearer you now. That’s it!” Laurie’s questing fingers had found the spot. It wasn’t much of a hold, only a bit of rough rock projecting an inch or so from the smooth face. Ned was suddenly aware that Polly was crouched beside him, crying nervously. He tried hard to think clearly. After a moment he said: “Laurie, we’re going for a rope. It will take some time, but—but it’s the only thing I can think of. Can you hold on until we get back?”

“I’ll stick,” was the grim answer. His voice was clearer now and steadier. “How far down am I?”

“About thirty feet.” Ned stumbled to his feet. “No use both of us going, Bob,” he said hurriedly. “You stay. And Polly. I guess I can find rope at the quarry.” He was off then, running down the path. Bob dropped to his knees again beside Polly. Polly was speaking, trying to make her voice steady and confident.

“It won’t be long, Laurie,” she called. “Be—be brave and—”

“Hello, Polly,” answered Laurie from below, a faint reminder of his old insouciance in his voice. “Nice fix, eh?”

“Yes, but don’t worry, and—you’d better not talk.”

“Guess I’d rather,” answered Laurie. “Sort of keeps me from thinking about—things.” After a moment he continued. “Position’s sort of cramped, Polly. Bob there, or did he go, too?”

“No, I’m here,” answered Bob. “I’ve been thinking—”

“Don’t do it,” said Laurie. “I tried it, and now look at me! Wish my legs wouldn’t tremble. How wide’s the thing I’m standing on, Bob?”

“Three inches. Maybe four. What I was—”

“Rock?”

“Yes, a sort of narrow ledge across the face; a fault, as they call it. It runs downward at your left almost to the bottom, I’d say. Listen, Nod. Suppose I got a long pole and lowered one end to you and held the other. Would that be easier for you to hold on to?”

Laurie considered a moment. “I reckon so,” he answered. “My right arm’s just about dislocated. Try it, will you, Bob?”

Bob arose and disappeared into the woods.

“Wish I could stand on my heels for a while,” said Laurie. “My toes are trying to dance. Where’s Ned gone for the rope?”

“To the quarry, he said,” Polly replied. “If Bob and I made a sort of rope of our clothes, Laurie, wouldn’t it be better than a pole?”

“Don’t believe so. I wouldn’t feel awfully easy in my mind if I trusted to that sort of rope. Anyway, I don’t intend to have you make rags of your new dress!”

“Oh, Laurie, as if a new dress mattered!” exclaimed Polly. “I do wish it wasn’t so thin, though. Here comes Bob.”

Bob brought the dead trunk of a young black birch about five inches thick at the butt where, by hacking with his knife and twisting, he had managed to sever it. Now he slashed the larger branches away. “Good thing it’s dried out,” he said to Polly. “If it wasn’t it would be too heavy to hold. Hope it’s long enough!”

“Oh, Bob, I don’t believe it is,” said Polly anxiously.

“If it isn’t I can find one that is.”

But it was. When Bob had lowered the smaller end down the cliff at Laurie’s right and Laurie had very carefully and rather fearfully unclasped his numb fingers from their rocky hold and clutched them about the tree there remained a few inches of the butt end above the level of the ground. Taking a firm hold with both hands at arm’s length as he lay facedown, Bob smiled his satisfaction.

“She’ll hold you, Nod, even if the shelf you’re standing on gives way! Polly can sit on my legs if she has to, and after that I’m good for all day.”

“Gee, that’s a lot better,” said Laurie. “Wow, that arm was almost out at the socket! Can you see this fault, as you call it from where you are?”

“Yes.”

“Look it over, will you? Does it go right to the bottom?”

“N-no, not quite, I guess. I can’t just see the end of it. There’s a three-cornered hunk of ledge sticking out down there. I guess it stops about a dozen feet from the bottom, Nod.”

“All right. Tell you what I’m figuring on. You check me up, you two. Suppose I have that rope that Ned’s gone for. It wouldn’t be any good for me to try and climb it, for I’m aching all over and I just wouldn’t have the strength. If I tied it around me you three couldn’t pull me up over that edge. Of course if the rope’s long enough you fellows can lower me down, or I could put a turn of the rope around me and get down myself, I reckon. How about that?”

“You’d get awfully scraped up, I’m afraid,” said Bob. “I’m pretty sure the three of us can pull you up, Nod.”

“I don’t believe you could. It would be risky, anyway. Maybe, though, I can climb up somehow.”

“Perhaps,” offered Polly, “Ned will bring some one back with him to help.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Laurie. “If he doesn’t, the next best thing is a rope long enough to reach to the bottom. My idea was this, Bob.” He paused long enough to shift one foot gingerly and relieve his jumping nerves. “I thought I could tie the end of the rope under my shoulders and work along this ledge that I’m standing on until I got where I could jump or drop or something.”

“We could lower you the rest of the way if the rope lasted.”

“Yes, of course. Question is—” Laurie’s words were coming slower now, with pauses between—“question is, can you folks follow along the edge and hold your end of the rope?”

Bob turned his head and studied. After a minute he said: “Yes, I’m sure we can. The trees are close to the edge in places, but we could manage to pass the rope around them. We’ll see to that. Trouble is, Nod, there’s a place about ten or twelve yards from where you are where the blamed shelf sort of peters out for a ways, nearly five feet, I’d say.”

“That so?” Laurie deliberated. “Well, if you fellows took a turn around a tree with your end of the rope I reckon I could make it, eh?”

“Yes, I think you could,” Bob agreed. “Sure, you could!”

“All right. Guess that’s ... the best plan,” said Laurie tiredly. “How long’s Ned ... been gone?”

“Oh, he must be back in a minute!” cried Polly. “He’s been gone a long, long time.”

“Seen him down there ... yet?”

“He probably went to the office-building near the dock,” answered Bob. “You can’t see that from here. Keep the old dander up, Nod.”

“I know,” agreed Laurie, “only ... I ain’t so well in my dander! Ought to see ... a doctor—”

“He’s coming!” cried Polly. “I hear him!”

Even as she spoke joyfully, Ned came into sight, panting, perspiring, flushed, a coil of rope over a shoulder. He fairly staggered up the last of the ascent and across the small clearing, his eyes questioning Polly’s anxiously.

“He’s all right,” cried Polly. Ned exhaled a deep breath of relief and struggled to disencumber himself of the rope. The girl sprang to his aid.

“I broke a window in the shed down there,” panted Ned. “This was all I could find, but it’s good and strong.” He began with trembling fingers to fashion a noose.

“Oh, Ned,” faltered Polly, “it’s so short!”

“How long?” called Bob.

“Forty feet,” replied Ned. “Maybe more. It’s more than long enough!”

Polly explained hurriedly, and Ned’s face fell as he stared despairingly at the cliff’s edge. Then his shoulders went back. “We’ll get him up,” he said grimly. “We’ll get him up or I’ll go down with him!” He went on bunglingly with the noose. Bob and Laurie were talking beyond the edge.

“Rope’s too short for your scheme,” Bob said as cheerfully as he could. “Only about forty or fifty feet, Nod.”

“Wouldn’t do, eh?” Laurie asked after a moment’s silence.

“No, too short by thirty feet, I guess. Twenty, anyway. We’ll have to pull you up, old chap. We’ll manage it.”

Ned was peering down now. “I’ve made a slip-noose, Laurie. We’ll lower it down, and you can get one arm through and then the other.”

“Wait a bit,” said Bob. “You’d better take hold of that ledge again with your right hand first, Nod. These branches will be in the way. Can you reach it? Higher yet. There you are! All right.” Bob pulled up the birch-tree, edged his body back, rolled over, and took several deep breaths. Then he rubbed his neck vigorously and got to his knees. “Polly,” he directed, “you take hold of the end of the rope and, for the love of Mike, don’t let go of it! Lower away now, Nid. Coming down, old chap. Left arm first. Straighten it up. All right. Get your hold again. Now the other. Hold the rope closer in, Nid. Right-o! Fine! Tighten up easy, Nid. How’s that, down there?”

“All right, thanks. Ned, don’t start anything until you’ve rested a bit. I can hear you puffing down here. I’m fine now and can spend the day here.”

Ned sank down and relaxed, breathing heavily and mopping his face. “Best way to do,” said Bob to him, “will be to take a turn of rope around a tree and let Polly take up the slack as we haul. It’ll be a hard tug, with the rope binding over the edge, but I guess we can do it.” Ned nodded, took a deep breath, and stood up.

“Let’s go,” he said shortly.

CHAPTER XIII
THE PEQUOT QUEEN

The first pull on the rope resulted only in sawing through the turf and earth at the edge of the cliff until the rock was reached. The next tug brought a few inches more at the cost of terrific effort, for the rope must pass at almost right angles over the raw edge of the rock. Laurie, his hands clasping the rope above his head to lessen the strain across his chest, was showered with earth. Another heave, and Ned and Bob went back a scant foot, Polly, her weight on the rope, tightening the slack around the tree. Once more the two boys dug their heels into the ground and strained. This time there was no result. They tried again. It was as though they were pulling at the cliff itself. The rope tautened under their efforts but yielded not an inch.

“Must be ... caught!” gasped Bob.

Ned, weak from that hurried climb up the hill, nodded, and closed his eyes dizzily. The moment’s silence was broken by a hail from Laurie.

“No good, you fellows! The rope’s worked into a crevice of the rock and is jammed there. I’ll have to climb it myself. Make your end fast around something and stand by to give me a hand—if I make it!”

Bob silently questioned Ned, and the latter nodded again. “Let him try,” he said huskily. “If he can’t—”

“Oh, wait, wait!” cried Polly. “We’re—we’re perfect idiots! He doesn’t have to do that, Ned! He can walk along that ledge, and we can hold the rope—”

“But it isn’t long enough,” Bob expostulated.

“Not down,” said Polly impatiently; “up!”

“Up? By Jove, that’s so! See what she means, Ned? Here, let’s get this tied to the tree!” A moment later Bob was at the edge, his eager gaze following the narrow ledge as it ascended at Laurie’s right. Scarcely twenty feet beyond, it ended at a perpendicular fissure hardly four feet below the top. Gleefully he made known the discovery to Laurie, and the latter, stretched like a trussed fowl against the rock, his toes still just touching the shelf, grunted.

“Never thought of that,” he said disgustedly. He stretched his head back until he could see the shelf. Then, “It’s a cinch,” he affirmed. “You’ll have to get the rope free first, though, and ease up on it until I can get my feet back on the ledge. Can you do it?”

“Have to,” answered the other cheerfully. Cautiously he and Ned untied the rope from about the tree, gave it some three inches of slack, retied it, and set to work at the edge of the cliff. Or, rather, Bob worked, for Ned’s hands trembled so that he couldn’t. The rope was fast in a jagged-edged notch of the rock, and Bob’s only implement, his pocket-knife, was somewhat inadequate. But he made it do. Using the handle like a tiny hammer, he chipped and chipped until finally the rope began to slip downward and Laurie’s weight rested again on the ledge. The end about the tree was unfastened; the rope was lifted from the channel it had dug through the overlying soil and carried a yard to the left. Then, with Ned and Bob and Polly holding it, their heels dug firmly into the sod, Laurie began his journey.

It was slow work at first, for his nerves and muscles responded ill to the demands of his brain, and delays came when those above cautiously moved their position, taking new holds on the slowly shortening rope. Had Laurie been fresh for the task he would have swarmed up there in no time at all. As it was, it took a good ten minutes to reach the end of his journey; and, even so, he did not proceed to the limit of his narrow foot-path but, once his hands could reach the edge, squirmed his way over, Bob and Ned pulling and tugging.

Once there, he flopped over on his back in the tangle of brush and stretched legs and arms relievedly. In the little silence that ensued Bob removed the rope from Laurie and coiled it with unnecessary exactitude. Then Laurie took a long, deep breath, sat up, and said “Thanks!”

That relaxed the general tension. Bob laughed queerly, Ned grinned in a twisted way, and Polly dabbed at her eyes with a diminutive handkerchief.

“Welcome,” said Bob dryly. Then all four began to laugh and talk at the same time. After a moment of that Bob laid a hand on Laurie’s collar. “Let’s get out of this,” he said. Laurie got to his feet somewhat shakily, and they fought their way back to the little clearing. “Now,” said Bob, “we’ll just sit down and look at that view we came up here to see and get rested for a quarter of an hour. I don’t know how Laurie feels, but I’m all in!”

“I’ll bet you are,” responded Laurie. “Guess I had the easiest part of it.”

“You look it,” answered Bob sarcastically. Laurie’s face was brown with dirt, his knuckles were bleeding, there was a cut on his chin, and his clothes were torn until they looked fit only for the ragman. Ned, who had been scowling blackly for the last minute or two, broke into sudden speech.

“Of all the crazy lunatics, Laurie,” he began fiercely.

“Oh, please, Ned!” cried Polly. “He didn’t mean to do it!”

“Let him say it,” said Laurie humbly. “I deserve it, and it’ll do him good.”

But Ned’s eloquence had fled him. He said “Humph!” and turned his head away and stared hard at the wide expanse of scenery spread before him. The others pretended not to know that there were tears in his eyes, and Bob said hastily: “Well, all’s swell that ends swell! How did it happen, anyway, Nod?”

“Oh, I was—was thinking about something and didn’t realize I was so close to the edge, I guess. Then Ned called to me and I turned around quick and one foot began to go. I tried to catch hold of that tree there and missed it. Next thing I knew I was sliding down the rock. I guess that trying to catch hold of the tree saved me, because it threw me forward and, instead of falling outward, I went sliding down with my face scraping against the rock. Somehow, just by luck, I got hold of a root for a second. It broke off, but it helped, I guess, for I stopped with my feet on that ledge and my right hand holding on to something above me. I suppose I made sort of a fuss about it down there,” he concluded apologetically, “but you don’t know how quivery your nerves get, Bob. Seemed like my legs wanted to dance all the time!”

“Son, you certainly had a narrow squeak of it,” said Bob solemnly. “Gee, when I saw you go over—”

“Oh, it was perfectly horrible,” shuddered Polly. “And then afterward, while Ned was gone—”

“There’s a busted window down there that some one’s got to settle for,” growled Ned.

“Believe me, old scout,” replied Laurie feelingly, “I’m willing to settle for a hundred busted windows! Of course, I don’t mean that it wouldn’t have been a heap more considerate of you to have slipped the catch with your knife and saved me the expense.”

Ned faced them again then, glaring at his brother. “You poor fish!” he said contemptuously.

“That’s me,” agreed Laurie smilingly. “Pulled up with a line!”

Polly and Bob laughed, the former a trifle hysterically. Then Ned’s mouth twitched itself into a grin. “Laurie, you’re an awful fool,” he said affectionately.

“Guess you’re right, Neddie.” He climbed to his feet, stamped them experimentally, seemed to approve of the result, and added, “Well, unless some one else is going to fall over, say we go home.”

“I’m ready,” agreed Bob. “How about the rope? Oughtn’t we—”

“In payment for my share in the recent—er—episode,” said Laurie, “I’ll look after it. Where’d you get it, Ned?”

“Why don’t we all go?” asked Polly. “It isn’t much farther that way.”

“Right-o,” agreed Bob. “Besides, who knows what Laurie would do next if we let him go alone?”

So they set off down the hill again, every one by now extremely merry and light-hearted in the reaction. They dropped the rope through the window in the shed adjoining the office of the quarry company and retraced their steps to the village and up Walnut Street and so, finally, just as dusk began to settle down, reached the little shop. There it was Polly who voiced the thought that had been in the minds of the rest for some time.

“Perhaps,” said Polly, “it would be better if we didn’t say anything about what happened.”

“Polly,” declared Laurie relievedly—and slangily, “you spoke a mouthful!”

“Yes,” agreed Ned. “No use worrying folks about a thing when it’s all over.”

“Of course not,” chimed in Bob. “Guess it won’t happen again, anyway.”

“Not with me in the rôle of happenee,” said Laurie with conviction.

“If it ever does,” said Ned, “you’ll hang over the cliff until you dry up and blow away for all of me, you poor simp!”

But when they had said good night to Bob Ned’s tune was different. “Old-timer,” he said after a silence, “you sure had me scared.”

“I know,” said Laurie soberly. “Sorry, Ned.”

“Uh-huh. ’S all right.” Ned slipped his arm in Laurie’s. “Wish you’d cut out that sort of thing, though. Always gives me heart-failure. It’s risky business, anyway.”

“Right,” agreed Laurie. After a minute, as they passed through the gate, he added, “No more I’ll risk my neck on dizzy height.”

“Well said, for if you do you’ve me to fight!”

That evening the twins were content to lounge in easy-chairs in the recreation-room and read, refusing challenges to ping-pong, chess, and various other engagements requiring exertion of mind or body. They went early to bed and, although Laurie roused once to hear Ned in the throes of nightmare and had to quiet him before returning to his own dreamless slumber, awoke in the morning their normal selves again.

After breakfast that morning Laurie announced to Ned that he was going to walk down and explain the broken window, and settle for it if settlement was demanded. Ned said, “All right, come along.” But Laurie persuaded the other that his presence during the conference with the quarry company officials was not only unnecessary but inadvisable. “You see,” he elaborated, “it’s going to require tact, old son, and Tact, as you know, is my middle name. Now, if I took you along you’d be sure to say something to queer the whole show and I’d have to fork over a dollar, maybe. No, better leave this to me, Ned.”

“Must say you fancy yourself a bit this morning,” scoffed Ned. “All right, though. Come over to Bob’s when you get back. I told him I’d go around there and look at the court.”

Laurie saved his dollar by narrating a moving tale of his fall from the cliff to the occupants of the small office down by the river. One weazened little man who held a pen in his mouth and talked through it or around it—Laurie couldn’t decide which—reminded the visitor that if he had not trespassed on quarry company property he wouldn’t have got in trouble. But it was plain that this view was not popular with the other members of the force present, and Laurie was permitted to depart with his last week’s allowance intact.

From the office he made his way across toward the stone-walled dock where lay the Pequot Queen. Once he paused, turned, and sent his gaze to the great mass of rock that arose precipitately from beyond the littered floor of the quarry. He couldn’t see the tiny ledge that had saved his life yesterday, but there, looking very small from down here, was the leaning tree, and he measured the distance to the rock-strewn ground beneath and shuddered. He was still gazing when there was a dull concussion and a cloud of gray dust, and a great pile of rock slid down the face. The little locomotive tooted and came rocking toward the railway, dragging a flat-car loaded with two great squares of rock. On the farther side of the small dock a lighter was being loaded, a big boom swinging from cars to deck to the music of a puffing engine and the shrill piping of a whistle. Laurie continued his way to the Pequot Queen.

A few years before the boat had been used in the ferry service between Orstead and Hamlin, across the river. Then the business failed to show a profit, the company was dissolved, and the Pequot Queen was pushed into the quarry company’s dock—without permission, if rumor was to be credited—and left to rot. She was about fifty feet long and very broad of beam. The stern was occupied by a cabin with many windows, a few of which were still unbroken. Amidships, if one may apply the term to a launch, was a small engine-room in which a rusted upright engine still stood amid a litter of coal-dust. A door led to a smaller compartment, the wheel-house. Between that and the bow was a space for luggage and freight. The Pequot Queen had not carried vehicles.

At one time the boat had doubtless shone resplendent in white paint and gold-leaf. Now there were few traces of either remaining. The name was still legible on each side of the bow, however, in faded black. Through the roof a rusty smoke-stack pushed its way to lean perilously to starboard. Atop the cabin, reached by a narrow companion, benches inside a pipe-railing had afforded accommodation for passengers in fine weather. The boat was secured fore and aft with frayed hawsers, and her rail lay close to the wall. Laurie viewed her speculatively from stem to stern and then stepped aboard. Had there been any one about to observe him they might have thought that here was a possible purchaser, for he went over the boat completely and exhaustively, giving, however, most of his time to the cabin. In the end he went ashore and once more viewed the derelict in frowning speculation. There was no doubt that the Pequot Queen had outlived her use as a water-craft. She still floated and would probably continue to float for many years yet, but old age had claimed her, as rotting timbers and yawning seams showed. Yet Laurie, whether or not he was a prospective purchaser, turned away at last with an expression of thoughtful satisfaction on his countenance.

Back by the railroad, he stopped and viewed his surroundings intently. On one side lay the bridge, with the Basin beyond and to the left, and the big quarry to his right. On the other side was the company office and shed, the dock and pier, the latter piled high with roughly-squared blocks of stone. Toward town the river’s margin was unoccupied for a space, and then came the coal-wharves and the lumber company’s frontage. It was a noisy and dust-laden spot in which the Pequot Queen had been left to pass her declining years, and Laurie shook his head slowly as though the realization of the fact displeased him. Finally he crossed the bridge again, hurrying a little in order not to compete for passage with a slow-moving freight from the north, and continued along the river-front until he had passed the station and the warehouses across the track and was again allowed a view of the stream unimpeded by buildings. Here there was no wall along the river, but now and then the remains of an ancient wooden bulkhead still stood between the dusty road and the lapping water. Here and there, too, a rotted hulk lay careened or showed naked ribs above the surface further out. Across the road hardly more than a lane now, a few dejected but respectable dwellings stood behind their tiny front yards. Behind them the hill sloped upward less abruptly than farther back and was thickly clustered with unpretentious houses wherein the industrious foreign-born citizens of Orstead lived. Compared to the vicinity of the quarry, however, this section of town was clean and quiet. There were trees here, and later on there would be grass along the unfrequented road and flowers in the little gardens. Westward lay the sunlit river and the wooded shore beyond. Laurie nodded approvingly more than once as he dawdled along, paying, as it appeared, special attention to the margin of the stream. Finally, more than an hour after he had left school, he retraced his steps as far as Ash Street and turned uphill.

Ash Street was two blocks north of Walnut and, having an easier grade to climb, was less devious in its journey. It brought Laurie at length to Summit Street a short block from the little white house from which Miss Comfort had lately removed. As he passed it Laurie observed that so far no vandal hand had been laid on it. The brown shutters were closed at the down-stairs windows, and the buds on the lilac-bushes were swelling fast. Somehow these two facts, apparently unrelated, combined to bring a little pang of sadness to the observer. He went on, with only a glance down Pine Street to the blue shop, and entered the side gate of the Coventry place.

CHAPTER XIV
A PERFECTLY GORGEOUS IDEA

Ned and Bob were watching Thomas, the man-of-all-work, rolling the cinder surface of the new tennis-court. Theirs was a pleasant occupation for such a morning, and Laurie joined them where they sat on a pile of posts and boards that had once been a grape-arbor and that had been removed to make way for the court.

“What happened to you?” asked Ned. “Thought maybe they’d had you arrested. Bob and I were just talking of pooling our resources and bailing you out.”

“I found I had nearly ninety cents,” said Bob proudly.

“No, they were all right about it,” replied Laurie musingly. Then he lapsed into silence, staring thoughtfully at Thomas as he paced to and fro behind the stone roller.

“What do you think of it?” asked Bob, nodding at the court.

“Corking. Pretty nearly done, isn’t it?”

“Pretty nearly. It’ll take about two days to put the gravel on. They’re going to bring the first load this afternoon. It has to have clay mixed with it, you know, and that makes it slower. And then it’s got to be rolled well—”

“Seems to me,” said Laurie, “a turf court would have been easier.”

“Yes, but they don’t last. You know that. And it’s the very dickens to get a grass surface level.”

Laurie nodded. It was evident to Ned, who had been watching him closely, that Laurie’s mind was not on the tennis-court. “What’s eating you, partner?” he asked finally. Laurie started.

“Me? Nothing. That is, I’ve been thinking.”

“Don’t,” begged Ned. “You know what it did to you yesterday.”

“I want you and Bob to be at Polly’s this afternoon when she gets home from school. I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Tell us now,” suggested Bob. Laurie shook his head.

“No use saying it twice.”

“What’s it about?” asked Ned.

“About—about Miss Comfort.”

“Gee,” said Bob, “I thought that was done with. What about her, Nod?” But Laurie shook his head, and their pleas for enlightenment were vain.

“You’ll know all about it this afternoon,” he said. “So shut up.” A minute after he asked, “Say, Bob, does your father know the folks who run that quarry?”

“Yes, I guess so. He buys stone from them. Why?”

“I want to meet the head guy, president or general manager or whatever he calls himself. That’s all.”