III

III

SCHOOL TEAM VS. ALL-STARS!THERE WILL BE A GAME OF BASEBALL BETWEEN THE SCHOOL TEAM AND JONES’S ALL-STARS ON THE PLAYING FIELD AT THREE O’CLOCK THURSDAY. THIS IS THE ATHLETIC EVENT OF THE SEASON, AND IT IS HOPED THAT THE SCHOOL WILL SHOW ITS APPRECIATION OF THE EFFORTS OF THE ALL-STARS TO PROVIDE INSTRUCTION FOR THE SCHOOL TEAM BY TURNING OUT IN FORCE. SPECIAL TRAINS WILL BE RUN, AND A RATE OF ONE AND A HALF THE REGULAR FARE WILL BE CHARGED.COME ONE, COME ALL!

SCHOOL TEAM VS. ALL-STARS!

THERE WILL BE A GAME OF BASEBALL BETWEEN THE SCHOOL TEAM AND JONES’S ALL-STARS ON THE PLAYING FIELD AT THREE O’CLOCK THURSDAY. THIS IS THE ATHLETIC EVENT OF THE SEASON, AND IT IS HOPED THAT THE SCHOOL WILL SHOW ITS APPRECIATION OF THE EFFORTS OF THE ALL-STARS TO PROVIDE INSTRUCTION FOR THE SCHOOL TEAM BY TURNING OUT IN FORCE. SPECIAL TRAINS WILL BE RUN, AND A RATE OF ONE AND A HALF THE REGULAR FARE WILL BE CHARGED.

COME ONE, COME ALL!

This notice appeared on the bulletin board on Monday morning and provided a deal of amusement and much speculation at Randall’s. Jonesie was overwhelmed with requests for further particulars and offers of skilled assistance. In every case Jonesie referred the inquirer to the notice and informed him that the team was already made up. Billy Carpenter cornered him in the corridor between recitations and demandedto know what he meant by such tomfoolery. Jonesie was surprised and pained.

“Didn’t you agree to play my team on Thursday?” he demanded.

“I was only in fun, you little idiot! A fine lot of ball players you’ll get! You take that notice down, Jonesie. If you don’t, I will!”

“Seems to me it’s a funny thing to back down now,” replied Jonesie, more in sorrow than in anger, “after I’ve made the team up and we’re to begin practice this afternoon. Still, of course, if you are really afraid to play us——”

“Who’s on your team?” asked Billy.

Jonesie enumerated the members of the All-Stars and Billy grinned.

“Who’s going to pitch?” he asked.

“Tubby Bumstead.”

Billy’s grin broadened and he clapped Jonesie on the shoulder. “All right,” he said gaily, “we’ll play you four innings, Jonesie, if you last that long. It’ll be funny, anyhow, eh?”

“Funny!” said Jonesie indignantly, even a little bitterly. “You think it’s funny when I go to all this trouble to help you fellows out! I’vea good mind not to do it! I’ve a good mind to just let you fellows go on the way you’re going and get licked by every little whippersnapper team that comes along, Billy! Funny! Huh! You won’t think it’s so funny when we lick you!”

“All right, Jonesie,” Billy laughed. “We’ll play you. Who do you want for an umpire?”

Jonesie shrugged his shoulders. “Any fellow you like. How about Gus Peasley?”

“Has he ever umpired a game?” asked Billy doubtfully.

“I’ll find out. If you don’t want Gus, though——”

“Sure, Gus will do. Let’s make it as funny as we can, eh?”

And Billy went off chuckling, leaving Jonesie apparently silent with indignation.

At noon he sought out Gus Peasley. Gus was an Upper Middler and so, in a way, might be considered impartial. “Ever umpire a ball game, Gus?” asked Jonesie.

Gus shook his head. “I was kicked by a mule once, though,” he said with apparent irrelevancy.

“You’re the fellow we want, then,” said Jonesie with deep conviction, “to umpire the game on Thursday.”

“Say, are you really going to play the School Team?” asked the other eagerly. “Why didn’t you give me a show, Jonesie?”

“I agreed to play only lower-classers, Gus. But Billy and I both want you to umpire.”

“Shucks, I never umpired a game in my life! I’d look fine, wouldn’t I?”

“I’ll lend you a book of rules, Gus, and you can study it a bit. The game’s on Thursday at three. Don’t forget.”

“But—— Here! Hold on, you silly idiot! I’m not going to umpire for you! Don’t be a chump, Jonesie!”

“Why not, when we both want you to? It isn’t anything to do and it’ll be heaps of fun, Gus.”

“Heaps of fun!” muttered Gus. “Someone’ll bump me on the head with a bat, I suppose! Well, all right. If you can stand it I can. Don’t forget those rules, though. Does that book tell when a foul ball is a strike and all that sort of thing?”

“Surest thing you know! You’ll have it all down pat by Thursday, Gus. Thanks awfully.”

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons the All-Stars were supposed to hold practice, and about three-fourths of the school went down to the field to enjoy the spectacle. But the All-Stars were not to be found on any of the afternoons mentioned. That Jonesie and Pinky Trainor and Tubby Bumstead and all the other members of the team were busy somewhere seemed probable since none of them was visible around the school, but they certainly were not on the playing field, and some six score youths were correspondingly disappointed.

But had any of them penetrated to the Games Room situated on the upper floor of the Recitation Hall they would have been at once surprised and interested. There, behind locked doors, the All-Stars were practicing. The practice was novel, however. Instead of batting and fielding and sliding to bases, the All-Stars sat in chairs or along the edge of the billiard table and not a bat nor a ball was to be seen. But Jonesie was coaching.

“Now, then, take Jimmy Buell. He will play left field for them, I suppose. Who knows anything about Jimmy?”

No one did, apparently, until young George Wrenn hazarded: “He’s sort of crazy about golf, isn’t he?”

“That’s so,” agreed Tubby Bumstead. “He’s trying for the team, or he was in the Fall.”

“That may do,” said Jonesie thoughtfully, making a note on the sheet of paper beside him. “We may be able to work that up. Anything else?”

Evidently that exhausted Buell and after a moment Jonesie went on.

“The next fellow is Gordon,” he announced.

Several of the All-Stars chuckled, and Jonesie smiled demurely himself.

“Onions!” said Pinky explosively, and the room rang with laughter.

“Onions,” agreed Jonesie. “That’ll do for Gordon, I guess! And that leaves only Proudfoot, and——”

“‘Quentin Durward,’” proclaimed Ernest Hoyt, “‘is probably the most popular work ofthe great novelist, William Makepeace Thackeray.’”

The All-Stars chuckled and giggled.

“‘A lambkin,’” contributed Sparrow Bowles, “‘is a fleece-bearing quadruped closely related to the domestic lamb or sheep.’”

“Don’t believe he ever wrote that one,” laughed Tubby.

“Yes, he did, too. Sumner Hayes heard Old Fury read it in class last year.”

“It’s great, anyway,” applauded Jonesie, scribbling feverishly on his paper. “Lambkin for Proudfoot’s! There, that’s the lot of ’em. I’ll have copies of this ready for you fellows to-morrow and then, next day, we’ll have a quiz. Practice is over!”

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