Batting to Win.

by Lester Chadwick.

CHAPTER I

A STRANGE MESSAGE

Sid Henderson arose from the depths of an antiquated easy chair, not without some effort, for the operation caused the piece of furniture to creak and groan, while from the thick cushions a cloud of dust arose, making a sort of haze about the student lamp, and forcing two other occupants of the college room to sneeze.

"Oh, I say, Sid!" expostulated Tom Parsons, "give a fellow notice, will you, when you're going to liberate a colony of sneeze germs. I--er--ah!

kerchoo! Hoo! Boo!" and he made a dive for his pocket handkerchief.

"Yes," added Phil Clinton, as he coughed protestingly. "What do you want to get up for and disturb everything, when Tom and I were so nice and quiet? Why can't you sit still and enjoy a good think once in a while?

Besides, do you want to give that chair spinal meningitis or lumbago?

Our old armchair, that has stuck to us, through thick and thin, for better and for worse--mostly worse, I guess. I say----"

"I came near sticking to it, myself," remarked Sidney Henderson, otherwise known as, and called, Sid. "It's like getting out of the middle of a featherbed to leave it. And say, it does act as if it was going to pieces every time one gets in or out of it," he added, making a critical inspection of the chair.

"Then why do you want to get in or out?" asked Phil, closing a book, over which he had made a pretense of studying. "Why do you do it, I ask?

You may consider that I have moved the previous question, and answer,"

he went on. "How about it, Tom?"

"The gentleman is out of order," decided Tom, a tall, good-looking lad, with the bronzed skin of an athlete, summer and fall, barely dimmed by the enforced idleness of winter. "Sid, you are most decidedly out of order--I think I'm going to sneeze again," and he held up a protesting hand. "No, I'm not, either," he continued. "False alarm. My, what a lot of dust! But, go ahead, Sid, answer the gentleman's query."

"Gentleman?" repeated the lad, who had arisen from the easy chair, and there was a questioning note in his voice.

"Here! Here! Save that for the amateur theatricals!" cautioned Tom, looking about for something to throw at his chum. "Why did you get up?

Answer!"

"I wanted to see if it had stopped raining," announced Sid, as he moved over toward one of the two windows in the rather small living room and study, occupied by the three chums, who were completing their soph.o.m.ore year at Randall College. "Seems to me it's slacking up some."

"Slacking up some!" exclaimed Tom.

"Stopped raining!" echoed Phil. "Listen to it! Cats and dogs, to say nothing of little puppies, aren't in it. It's a regular deluge. Listen to it!"

He held up his hand. Above the fussy ticking of a small alarm clock, which seemed to contain a six-cylindered voice in a one-cylindered body, and which timepiece was resting at a dangerous angle on a pile of books, there sounded the patter of rain on the windows and the tin gutter outside.

"Rain, rain, nothing but rain!" grumbled Phil. "We haven't had a decent day for baseball practice in two weeks. I'm sick of the inside cage, and the smell of tan bark. I want to get into the open, with the green gra.s.s of the outfield to fall on."

"Well, this weather is good for making the gra.s.s grow," observed Tom, as he got up from his chair, and joined Sid at the window, down which rain drops were chasing each other as if in glee at the anguish of mind they were causing the three youths.

"Aren't you anxious to begin twirling the horsehide?" asked Sid. "I should think you'd lose some speed, having only the cage to practice in, Tom."

"I am, but I guess we'll get some decent weather soon. This can't last forever."

"It's in a fair way to," grumbled Phil.

"It would be a nice night if it didn't rain," came from Sid musingly, as he turned back to the old easy chair, "which remark," he added, "is one a little boy made in the midst of a driving storm, when he met his Sunday-school teacher, and wanted to say something, but didn't know what."

"Your apology is accepted," murmured Tom. "I don't know what you fellows are going to do, but I'm going to sew up a rip in my pitcher's glove. I think maybe if I do the weather man will get a hunch on himself, and hand us out a sample of a nice day for us to select from."

"Nice nothing!" was what Phil growled, but with the activity of Tom in getting out his glove, and searching for needle and thread, there came a change of atmosphere in the room. The rain came down as insistently, and the wind lashed the drops against the panes, but there was an air of relief among the chums.

"I've got to fix a rip in my own glove," murmured Sid. "Guess I might as well get at it," and he noted Tom threading a needle.

"And I've got to do a little more boning on this trigonometry," added Phil, as, with a sigh, he opened the despised book.

For a time there was silence in the apartment, while the rain on the windows played a tattoo, more or less gentle, as the wind whipped the drops; the timepiece fussed away, as if reminding its hearers that time and tide waited for no man, and that 99-cent alarm clocks were especially exacting in the matter. Occasionally Sid shifted his position in the big chair, to which he had returned, each movement bringing out a cloud of dust, and protests from his chums.

The room was typical of the three lads who occupied it. At the beginning of their friendship, and their joint occupation of a study, they had agreed that each was to be allowed one side of the apartment to decorate as he saw fit. The fourth side of this particular room was broken by two windows, and not of much use, while one of the other walls contained the door, and this one Sid had chosen, for the simple reason that his fancy did not run to such things as did Tom's and Phil's, and he required less s.p.a.ce for his ornaments.

Sid was rather an odd character, somewhat quiet, much given to study, and to delving after the odd and unusual. One of his fads was biology, and another, allied to it, nature study. He would tramp all day for a sight of some comparatively rare bird, nesting; or walk many miles to get a picture of a fox, or a ground-hog, just as it darted into its burrow. In consequence Sid's taste did not run to gay flags and banners of the college colors, worked by the fair hands of pretty girls, nor did he care to collect the pictures of the aforesaid girls, and stick them up on his wall. He had one print which he prized, a representation of a football scrimmage, and this occupied the place of honor.

As for Tom and Phil, the more adornments they had the better they liked it, though I must do them the credit to say that they only had one place of honor for one girl's photograph at a time. But they sometimes changed girls. Then, on their side, were more or less fancy pictures--scenes, mottoes, and what not. Much of the ornamentation had been given them by young lady friends.

Of course the old chair and an older sofa, together with the alarm clock, which had been handed down from student to student until the mind of Randallites ran not to the contrary, were the chief other things in the apartment, aside from the occupants thereof. Each lad had a desk, and a bureau or chiffonier, or "Chauffeur" as Holly Cross used to dub them. These articles of furniture were more or less in confusion.

Neckties, handkerchiefs, collars and cuffs were piled in a seemingly inextricable, if not artistic, confusion. Nor could much else be expected in a room where three chums made a habit of indiscriminately borrowing each other's articles of wearing apparel, provided they came any where near fitting.

On the floor was a much worn rug, which Phil had bought at auction at an almost prohibitive price, under the delusion that it was a rare Oriental. Learning to the contrary he and his chums had decided to keep it, since, old and dirty as it was, they argued that it saved them the worriment of cleaning their feet when they came in.

Then there were three neat, white, iron beds--neat because they were made up fresh every day, and there was a dormitory rule against having them in disorder. Otherwise they would have suffered the fate of the walls, the rug or the couch and easy chair. Altogether it was a fairly typical student apartment, and it was occupied, as I hope my readers will believe, by three of the finest chaps it has been my lot to write about; and it is in this room that my story opens, with the three lads busily engaged in one way or another.

"Oh, I say! Hang it all!" burst out Sid finally. "How in the mischief do you shove a needle through this leather, Tom? It won't seem to go, for me."

"You should use a thimble," observed Tom. "Nothing like 'em, son."

"Thimble!" cried Sid scornfully. "Do you take me for an old maid? Where did you ever learn to use a thimble?" and he walked over to where Tom was making an exceedingly neat job of mending his glove.

"Oh, I picked it up," responded the pitcher of the Randall 'varsity nine. "Comes in handy when your foot goes through your socks."

"Yes, and that's what they do pretty frequently these days," added Phil.

"If you haven't anything to do, Tom, I wish you'd get busy on some of my footwear. I just got a batch back from the laundry, and I'm blessed if out of the ten pairs of socks I can get one whole pair."

"I'll look 'em over," promised the pitcher. "There, that's as good as new; in fact better, for it fits my hand," and he held up and gazed critically at the mended glove. "Where's yours, Sid?" he went on. "I'll mend it for you."

Silence was the atmosphere of the apartment for a few minutes--that is comparative silence, though the pushing of Tom's needle through the leather, squeaking as he forced it, mingled with the ticking of the clock.

"I guess we can count on a good nine this year," observed Tom judicially, apropos of the glove repairing.

"It's up to you, cap," remarked Sid, for Tom had been elected to that coveted honor.

"You mean it's up to you fellows," retorted the pitcher-captain. "I want some good batters, that's what I want. It's all right enough to have a team that can hold down Boxer Hall and Fairview Inst.i.tute, but you can't win games by shutting out the other fellows. Runs are what count, and to get runs you've got to bat to win."

"Listen to the oracle!" mocked Phil, but with no malice in his voice.

"You want to do better than three hundred with the stick, Sid."

"Physician, heal thyself!" quoted Tom, smiling. "I think we will have a good----"