CHAPTER IIKEWPIE 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 onme, 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 someone 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 meanintome?” 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. Weagreed 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 SummitStreet 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 wantedto 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 oldgame 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 exactlyforgetit, maybe, but it—it sort of passed out of my mind at the moment. You understand. I reallyought 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.