“Hello, Hodge!” cheerfully called Frank, as Hodge came into his room.
“Hello!” said Bart shortly.
“Sit down. I’ll be ready to chat a bit as soon as I finish this sentence.”
“Always writing,” muttered Bart, looking curiously at Frank’s work. “Don’t you ever give yourself a minute’s rest?”
“Oh, yes!” Merry laughed. “You know the fellows come round and make me hold up sometimes. But I’m rushing this work through, and I plug away at it when I find time.”
“What is it—a book?”
“You’ve guessed it.”
“Honest?” exclaimed Bart, surprised.
Frank nodded. Then, while Bart watched in wondering silence, he finished the sentence.
“There,” he exclaimed, throwing down the pen. “That chapter is nearly completed. One more and I’ll have the book done.”
“You’re not going to turn author, are you?” asked Bart.
“To some extent—perhaps,” nodded Frank. “I amthinking of giving some of my time to the work, which I find very pleasant, even though I have been forced to do it here in snatches and under great difficulty. When the idea came to me, I thought of putting it off till after leaving college, but it preyed upon me till I was forced to sit down and begin the work. Once begun, it has forced me to push it through to completion. I have written many a night when other fellows were sleeping, and I was supposed to be in bed myself.”
“What is it, anyway—a novel?”
“No.”
“Then what——”
“You’ll see when it is published. I think it will contain a lot of good advice.”
Bart nodded.
“That’s right,” he agreed. “If I had not had you for an example, Merriwell, there’s no telling what I’d be now. I’m certain I must have developed into a cigarette fiend.”
“And cigarette fiends never can be strong until they give up the things forever,” asserted Frank. “Every day a fellow smokes cigarettes on this end of life he wipes off a day on the other end. He is cutting his life shorter day by day, though he may not know it. It’s true, Hodge, and it makes me feel bad for some of the foolish chaps who think theyare sporty and up to date because they smoke the little paper-covered life-destroyers.”
“That’s all right,” agreed Bart; “but there are some fellows who do not smoke cigarettes, and who cannot play ball.”
Merry looked at his companion sharply, quickly divining what Bart was driving at.
“You’re feeling bad over the loss of that game,” he said. “Well, don’t you think I felt rather sore? If I’d pitched the whole of it there might have been——”
“The pitching did not lose that game, Frank, and you know it.”
“Perhaps not; but——”
“You know, I know, and everybody knows, just where the responsibility falls. Mason lost that game. He let in six runs by dropping those two flies.”
“Two men must have scored, anyhow, even if he had caught them. It would have been great work if he had stopped either runner at the plate.”
“But what if they had? We’d carried off the game, with a score of eight to six. It was the other four scores that beat us. Three of them came in off Starbright’s pitching. Now, you know I have never taken much stock in Mason. Some fools have said it’s because Mason is like me; but that’s not it at all. He hasn’t sand, Merriwell, and it takes sand to play ball.”
“I think you are wrong, Hodge. I believe Mason has plenty of sand.”
But Hodge shook his head grimly.
“I don’t believe it. Even if he has, he can’t fill that field, and you must know it by this time. There are plenty of better men than he who are eager to get onto the nine.”
“Name a few of them.”
“Hershal, for one.”
“And would you advise me to drop Mason and take on Hershal?” asked Frank quietly.
“It would be worth trying.”
“Do you believe in experimenting at this stage of the season?”
“Not exactly in experimenting,” said Bart, uneasily. “But you have tried Mason and found him a fizzle.”
“Hodge, you know the condition in which I found things when I came back to college this spring. The prospects for a first-class ball-team did not look very bright. The coaches were worried and disgusted. The newspapers were saying Yale could not put a winning team onto the field. Everybody lacked confidence. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I had to do something. I went to my friends who had some ability to play and asked them to come out and take hold. I asked them to get out everybody who had any chance of making a player.You know how the cage was filled with new men. Some of them were no good and did not stay long, but the coaches were encouraged, and things began to look up. Confidence was restored, and people began to say Yale had a chance. The tone of the newspaper reports changed. Things began to go better. On the Easter trip I took along every man who was promising. From those men I made the nine as it now stands, and I am still confident that the team is all right. I have every reason to be confident. Yale, for all of prophecies to the contrary, has had a strong team on the field and has won a great majority of her games. I know the hard games are to come, but the team is pulling together better every day. As long as the men have confidence in each other and all work hard to win everything will go right. The moment they begin to pull apart things will begin to go wrong. Jealousy, petty hatred, small spite, and such feelings ruin many ball-teams.”
Bart flushed.
“I hope you’re not firing shots at me!” he exclaimed. “I’m sure I’m not envious of Mason; but I will confess that I have lost my confidence in the fellow. You know as well as I do that he is a conceited, self-satisfied prig. He thinks himself much better than common folks.”
“And do you reckon yourself as common?” asked Frank.
“Not common—but—er—well, you know what I mean. He always was that way. He can’t get over the idea that the son of a South Carolina landowner, a chap whose father has never done work, is better than the son of a Northern farmer, who has bent his back to the plow. That kind of a feeling makes him hold his nose high, and it makes me sick! I’ve never had to work; my father had money, and he never performed manual labor; but I know fellows here who are working their way through college who are just as good as I am—some of them may be a blamed sight better. Mason, if his father were to fail to-morrow, would have to quit his college course. He couldn’t get through just because he couldn’t bring himself to honest work. Think he’d go up in the White Mountains and be a waiter at a summer hotel? Not much! He tries to hide it, but I know he feels contempt for fellows who are compelled to do such work. And the real truth is that such fellows are a hanged sight better men than Mason or any of his ilk! There—now you know what I think of Hock Mason.”
Frank smiled.
“Bart,” he said, “I knew you were prejudiced against Mason, although you have never spoken thus plainly before. It is because you do not understand the fellow. His rearing has been different from that of Northern men. He cannot at once accept a newpoint of view. He has been raised where day labor was looked on as suited to the black man and to poor white trash. The colored men and the low whites have degraded labor in that way. In the North colored laborers and illiterate whites do not carry the great burden of work. Some of our millionaires have been poor boys who have had to work hard at any old thing, and thus we look at work from another view-point. But we must not be too hard on Mason and fellows like him from the South. Above all things, Hodge, you must not let personal likes and dislikes influence you in baseball. No matter how much you dislike a man, if he can play ball, you must go in with him and work for the good of the nine.”
Bart was fidgeting.
“That’s all right,” he said; “but Mason can’t play. He proved it yesterday.”
“Have you ever seen him put up such a game before?”
“No; but he’s green.”
“And he has come forward faster than any green man I have ever tried. He has worked like a dog to make himself valuable. Not another man on the nine has worked so hard. He could catch a ball when he began, and that was about all he could do. He could not throw, but in one week’s time he became a good thrower. In three weeks he was good enough for the field. He could not bat, but he practised faithfully,and every day he made progress. He is now one of the safest hitters on the team.”
“But you can’t depend on him in an emergency, and you know it, Frank.”
“There were plenty of men who used to say the same thing about you. They don’t say so now.”
Bart shrugged his shoulders.
“They are saying everything you can imagine about Mason.”
Frank looked grim.
“Because Mason had a bad day and put up a poor game. Every player has such days, no matter how good he may be.”
“And you mean to keep him for all of what everybody says?”
“I mean to give him another trial.”
Just then there was a knock, and Mason stood outside the door. He came in at Merry’s invitation, looking blue as a whetstone. Without glancing at Hodge, he began:
“Mr. Merriwell, sah, I judge you’ve made a mighty big mistake in me. You thought I could play ball, but by this time, sah, you must be pretty well satisfied that I’m a first-class flub. I have come, sah, to give notice that I do not propose to make a jackass of myself any more. I am done, sah. As long as I live and have my right mind I’ll play no more baseball.”
A feeling of satisfaction seized upon Hodge, who thought:
“The fellow has more sense than I imagined.”
Frank looked at Mason calmly and steadily, something like deep indignation showing in his face.
“And is this the way you propose to treat me?” he sternly demanded. “I did think, Mason, that you were my friend.”
Hock gasped.
“I am, sah!” he cried quickly. “That’s why I’m taking myself off the nine. You don’t know what they’re saying, Mr. Merriwell. They say you took me on because you regarded me as a friend, and that it was a mighty bad piece of judgment on your part, sah. They say I must get off or ruin the team.”
“And you propose to leave me in the lurch just because some fellows have been making that kind of talk! I didn’t think it of you, Mason—I swear I didn’t!”
Hock looked distressed.
“I’m only doing what I think is the right thing, sah,” he protested. “If you knew what a miserable night I spent last night, Merriwell! I’d a heap rather been shot than to have lost that game. And I know I was the one who lost it! I should have held both of those flies. They were right in my hands.”
“Have I ever said anything to you because you failed to hold them?”
“No, sah.”
“Well, it was because I knew you felt bad enough about it. Had you been some one else on the team, I might have said something. Until that time you remain on the nine. You will report for practise to-morrow. There is no practise to-day.”
Mason’s breath was taken away by Frank’s masterful manner. He had come there firmly resolved to take himself off the team, no matter what Merriwell might say.
“But you—you don’t want me out there in center field,” he weakly said. “There are others——”
“You’ll report for practise to-morrow, Mason,” Frank again said, escorting Hock to the door. “And you’ll play in that field until I put you elsewhere. That matter is settled.”
When Mason was gone Frank turned and found Hodge looking black as a thunder-cloud.