CHAPTER XIIDAN RECONSIDERS
An hour had elapsed when Walter, who had not once left the piazza where he and his mother had been seated, exclaimed excitedly, “There he comes, mother! I hope he has had good luck.”
“I’m sure your father has induced the foolish boy to accept his offer. He has a great way of dealing with men, though I must confess that I haven’t very much sympathy with Dan. It seems to me that he has been a very foolish boy even to hesitate a moment. I’m sure he never will have another such opportunity.”
“You don’t know Dan, mother,” said Walter as he arose and ran down the steps to greet his father. “What luck, father?” he asked eagerly. “Did you get Dan to say he would go?”
“Yes.”
“Great!” shouted the excited boy. “We’ll make you an honorary member of the nine! How did you do it? What did Dan say?”
“He didn’t say very much.”
“But he really is going?”
“You’ll find him next September in your room when you go back to school.”
“Tell me how you did it!”
“I can’t do that just now. Isn’t it enough for you to know that Dan is to enter the Tait School this fall?”
“Yes, sir; but I’d like to know how you got him to say yes.”
“He won’t tell you.”
“And you won’t, either?”
“Not just now.”
“When will you tell me?”
“Perhaps at Christmas, perhaps next summer, or it may be that you never will know.”
“Why not?”
“That’s another thing you may never know, though I don’t mind telling you that I think you will find out.”
“How? When?”
“You must wait. I have succeeded in getting Dan to go to school with you. Can’t you be content with that?”
“I’ll have to be,” said Walter, “though I’d like to know the rest. May I go over then and talk it over with Dan?”
“Of course.”
“Then I’ll go now!” exclaimed Walter as he ran from the piazza.
“John, what did you say to Dan?” inquired Mrs. Borden of her husband, as he seated himself in a chair beside her.
“Well, I told Dan for one thing that he was notacting wisely in turning down the chance I gave him. I told him there was a difference between begging and receiving. That it sometimes was more gracious to receive than it was to give.”
“I can’t understand you, John,” said Mrs. Borden a little impatiently. “One would think to hear you that it was Dan conferring the favor and not you or Walter.”
“That is exactly what I did tell him,” said Mr. Borden quietly.
“You did?”
“I did. I told him that I knew as well as he that Walter was an only child and spoiled by his mother——”
“I don’t do any more for him than you do, John,” protested Mrs. Borden.
“I know that. We both do too much. The boy would be better off if he did more for himself, but I haven’t the strength of character to do what I know I ought to do. I didn’t have, when I was a boy, a fraction of what Walter has. My father made me work for almost everything I had. I didn’t like it then, but he was a wiser as well as a better man than I am.”
“There couldn’t be a more generous man than you, John.”
“Couldn’t there?” laughed Mr. Borden. “Well, I told Dan that I knew as well as he did that Walter is conceited and selfish—he thinks a good deal more of himself than of anyone else——”
“You didn’t tell him that!”
“I most certainly did. I told him Walter needed some things that Dan had——”
“What, for example?”
“Oh, Walter doesn’t work, he’s too easily turned aside, he gives up when he ought to hang on, he is vain as a peacock, and he hasn’t the remotest idea of the existence of anyone besides himself on this planet.”
“You didn’t say that about your own boy!”
“Not in those words, but Dan knew what I meant. Then I told him that he could help Walter, and I felt that if he should get my boy into a steadier way of working I’d be glad to pay him a good deal more than the amount his year at the Tait School will cost me. I put it so strongly that at last Dan agreed to try it a year. If I should not be satisfied then he is to leave the school and call off the bargain and he even suggested that he would pay back what I might have advanced——”
“He couldn’t pay it. He hasn’t any money.”
“Not just now. He’ll have plenty later. Likewise, he struck out fifteen men in the Benson game!” Mr. Borden added laughingly as he arose. “Oh, it’s Walter’s chance as well as Dan’s, but I don’t want you to tell Walter what I have just now told you. It might spoil my plan.”
“I think Walter is a good boy. I can’t understand you when you find so much fault with your own flesh and blood.”
“Mother,” said Mr. Borden softly, “sometimes it costs one more to be true than it does to say or do pleasing things. Ever think of that?”
“Of course I have, but I don’t see what that has to do with Walter.”
“Trust me—you will see it and more clearly than I do now.”
Meanwhile Walter had gone to Dan’s home, and as he entered the yard he saw his friend just coming out of the barn. He was carrying a pail of milk in each hand and his appearance, dressed as he was in his overalls and without any hat, for the first time impressed his friend with a vague sense of unfitness. What would Sinclair Bradley (called “Sin” by his fellows for more reasons than one) say if he should see Walter’s new roommate in his present garb? Walter vaguely thought also of the remarks which others of his classmates might make, but his feeling of vague uneasiness speedily departed as he ran forward to greet Dan. The thought of fifteen strike-outs was vastly stronger at the moment than that of the remarks of his friends over Dan’s somewhat uncouth appearance.
“Hello, Dan!” called Walter lightly as he approached. “I’ve heard the good news! You’re going to the Tait School with me this fall.”
“Yes,” responded Dan quietly.
“Why don’t you get excited, Dan?” Walter demanded as he walked beside his friend toward the milk-room, which was an addition to the old farmhouse,built of stone and provided with ice which Dan and his brother cut every winter from the mill-pond not far away.
“Perhaps I am, more than you think,” replied Dan.
“That’s all right. You’re as cool when you face the prospect of rooming with me as you are when you face the heaviest hitter on the other nine and have three men on bases.”
“Am I?” Dan spoke quietly, and Walter, in his own feeling of elation, perhaps failed to look beneath the surface.
“Yes. You wouldn’t be, if you knew what you are going into.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Dan soberly.
“Of course I am!” exclaimed Walter, enthusiastic once more in the company of his friend. “You’ll like the fellows immensely. Right across the hall from us will be Owen Pease and Sin Bradley’s room. You’ll like both of them. Owen plays in the field on the nine. He’s about ten feet long and two inches wide.”
“I should think he’d go with Barnum. I never saw a man built on that plan.”
“Oh, well, I’ve put it a little strong,” laughed Walter. “But he’s length without breadth or thickness. Honestly, Dan, he’s the thinnest person you ever saw.”
“But I never saw him.”
“You will, soon. Thinner than anyone I eversaw then; put it that way if you want to. When we were playing the Colt nine this spring Owen was scared, at least he said he was, to face the pitcher. He did throw a wicked ball, Dan, there’s no mistake about that. I felt a little nervous myself when I faced him. But Owen made such a time over it and said he was afraid of being hit that Sin took a bat and stuck it up on the ground right in front of Owen and said, ‘Here, old man, you just hide behind that and you’ll be safe.’”
“Did he get all his ten feet behind one bat?”
“He might as far as his thickness was concerned. Owen is the thinnest chap I ever saw, just as I told you, but he’s made of wire and steel.”
“Who is this ‘Sin’ you speak of?”
“Sin Bradley.”
“Why do you call him ‘Sin’?”
“His full name is Sinclair,” laughed Walter, “but I guess the name fits him all right just as it is. You never saw such a fellow in all your life, Dan. He’s up to more tricks than you can dream of. One day there was a fellow on the campus who was begging, pretending he was a deaf-mute——”
“How do you know he was ‘pretending’?”
“That’s what I’m telling you. Sin saw through his game before the beggar could get a chance. He just walked up to him and jumped on his toes. I’m telling you, Dan, that he wasn’t ‘mute’ for a spell there. He called Sin all kinds of names in about a thousand different languages.”
“He must have been pretty well educated to use as many different languages as that.”
“Oh, well, probably it wasn’t quite a thousand,” laughed Walter. “But the air was full of owskis and oskis there for about five minutes.”
“What did Sin do?”
“He went up to the beggar, sober as a judge, and begged his pardon. He told him how deeply he regretted the ‘accident’ and then said, ‘I feel worse about it because you are deaf and dumb. How long have you had this trouble?’
“‘More as dree year,’ muttered the fellow, caught off his guard. You ought to have heard the fellows yell.”
“What did the deaf-and-dumb man do?”
“Started for some vast wilderness, I guess. We heard about him afterward, though. He got on a street-car in the city the next day and he still had his big card placard on, ‘Please help a poor man who is deaf and dumb.’ There were some good people on the car and one of them suggested that they chip in and help the fellow. This man was a minister and he said it was a great pity that one who was so young should suffer from such a terrible affliction. The deaf-mute kept mum, pretending that he didn’t hear any of the talk, but just before they turned the money over to him a big fat man got on the car and when it started it threw him against the beggar and he brought one of his big feet down hard on the mute’s left foot. ‘Ouch!’yelled the beggar. ‘You old fat porcupine; can’t you look where you’re going?’”
“What happened to the poor fellow then?” inquired Dan with a smile.
“Oh, the good people hurried him off to the police court. Sin said he would have walked a thousand miles just to see the fellow when he was brought up before the magistrate.”
“How far?” said Dan quizzically.
“You’re too literal, Dan,” laughed Walter.
“Tell me about the teachers,” said Dan after he and his friend had joined Mrs. Richards and Tom on the piazza.
“Oh, they are the finest ever!” declared Walter. “Of course they try to make you ‘grind’——”
“Grind what?” inquired Mrs. Richards.
“Oh, grind at your books,” said Walter lightly. “Some of them are all right, though. There’s young Samson for example——”
“Is that his real name?” asked Tom.
“It is among the fellows. On the catalogue his name is Richard Lee Thomas, I believe. He was captain of the football team at college two years ago. He’s the strongest fellow you ever set eyes on.”
“What does he teach?” inquired Mrs. Richards.
“He coaches mostly, though he has charge of the gym work too.”
“I don’t understand,” said Mrs. Richards simply.
“He looks after the teams and the ‘physical welfareof the pupils,’ the catalogue says. Then there’s Kaiser; he has charge of the German and French. He’s a fine old boy. Soc too is good.”
“Soc?” asked Dan.
“Short for Socrates,” explained Walter. “He has the Latin and Greek. His real name is Jones, but the fellows all call him ‘Soc’ for short. ‘Trig’ has the mathematics. His name, I suppose, is Ephraim Jeremiah Paine, but the fellows had pity for him and changed his name to ‘Trig.’ Oh, they’re all fine old boys. You’ll have the time of your young life, Dan!”