NEW ACQUAINTANCES
“Hello――o――o, Dan!” Walter had exclaimed as he first caught sight of
his friend in the doorway. “Come right in! I’m mighty glad to see you!”
The impulsive Walter had leaped from the chair in which he was seated
and darting to the door seized Dan by the hand, then grasped his canvas
bag which he hurriedly took into the little bedroom which Dan was to
occupy. Turning quickly about he said to Sinclair: “Sin, this is the
new fellow I was telling you about. Stand up and do yourself proud to
shake hands with Dan Richards. He’s going to be the new pitcher on the
Tait School nine and he’ll make our opponents work some!”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Sin drawlingly, as he shook hands with the
new boy. The contrast between the two for the first time struck Walter
almost with the force of a blow: one easy and self-possessed in his
manner, dressed in the latest fashion, and having the confidence that
is the result of the possession of wealth and all that money implies;
the other quiet, but still somewhat self-conscious. His clothing
manifestly was not made by a fashionable tailor, and his face and hands
showed the effect of his toil in the fields. For a moment Walter
almost felt as if Dan must be painfully aware of his own deficiencies.
But if the newcomer was abashed in the presence of Sinclair Bradley,
his manner at least failed to betray it.
“I was late,” said Dan simply as he responded to Sin’s greeting, and
then in response to Walter’s suggestion seated himself in one of
the large easy chairs in the room. “I guess I’m not very much of a
traveler, for I stood still in the depot at Lee Junction and let my
train pull out and leave me.”
“You’ll learn,” laughed Walter a trifle noisily. “How long did you have
to wait?”
“Two hours.”
“That’s too bad. You’ll know better next time.”
“How did you leave all the old folks at home?” asked Sin with a drawl.
“They were well when I left,” replied Dan quietly.
“Good. How is Silas?”
“Silas who?”
“I don’t know the particular individual. Just Silas, I fancy.”
“Silas, the harness-maker, is in good health.”
“How are the crops?”
“Pretty fair.”
“Do you raise much hay?”
“Not a great deal.”
“What do you do with the hay-seed?”
“We don’t raise any.”
“Is that so? I fancied you did. Don’t all farmers raise hay-seed?”
“No,” replied Dan quietly, looking calmly at Sin as he spoke.
“I confess my ignorance. You must forgive me.”
Dan glanced at Walter as if he was somehow puzzled, but his dark eyes
and bronzed face did not change their expression. “If you don’t get
into the country very often of course you have forgotten some things,”
he said to Sinclair. “I remember only last summer there was a family
that came to Rodman to spend a few days. I didn’t know them, but it
seems their father was raised in our town; he went down to the city
and made a lot of money. This man Silas you asked me about knew them
all, though, and he explained everything to them, told them how he
had helped take their grandfather to the town poorhouse and got up a
donation party for the children. He described the first mule their
father bought――for it seems he made his first money as a horse-trader
before he began to buy hogs.”
“No wonder they forgot,” said Sinclair a little foolishly as he arose.
“So long, Walter,” he added lightly. “I’ll see you again,” he said to
Dan and at once departed from the room.
“You were enough for him, Dan,” laughed Walter.
“‘Enough for him’? I don’t know that I understand.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Walter, what does this fellow Sinclair’s father do for a living?”
“I understand that he is a brewer,” replied Walter a trifle uneasily.
“Is he?”
“So I hear. Why?”
“Oh, nothing in particular. How shall I get my trunk up here? Can I
borrow a wheelbarrow somewhere about the school?”
“Not on your life!”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“The expressman will bring it up for you. Didn’t you give your trunk
check to the man at the station?”
“What man? There were a good many men there.”
“The expressman.”
“I didn’t see any. I can bring it up myself.”
“Let me have your check,” said Walter harshly. Dan handed his roommate
his baggage check and as he did so two boys noisily entered the room
and greeted Walter with a shout. “Hello, old man!” exclaimed one of
them as he seized Walter’s hand and shook it. The other followed his
companion’s example, Dan meanwhile quietly observing the two boys and
feeling drawn at once to the one who had first greeted his roommate.
Even before he was introduced Dan became aware that the boy was known
as “Priz,” though what the name implied he did not know. The boy was a
sturdy fellow, manifestly possessed of great physical strength, and his
actions were so quick that they were almost catlike. The other boy was
tall and slender and much more refined in his bearing. His name, or at
least his nickname, Dan learned was “Chesty,” though why such a slender
delicate fellow should receive such a cognomen he could not at the time
conjecture.
“This is my new roommate,” said Walter after a brief delay, as he
presented Dan. “‘Priz’ is the name that Ned Davis goes by,” he
explained with a laugh. “You want to keep on good terms with him.”
“I am sure I want to,” said Dan with a smile.
“He’s the best boxer in the Tait School,” Walter explained. “‘Priz’ is
short for prize――prize-fighter, if you want the whole thing. We call
him that for short. Priz,” he added, “I guess you’ll have more to do
with Dan than any of the rest of us. Dan’s the fellow I wrote you about
this summer――striking out fifteen men, you know.”
“Is that so? Well, I’m one of the catchers of the nine here and I
guess you and I will come to see a good deal of each other. I hope so,
anyway. I’m mighty glad you came here. It’s the best school in the
country.”
Dan quietly acknowledged the cordial greeting and at once felt that
he would like Ned Davis, for the boy was genuinely cordial and his
interest in the possibility of a new “find” for the pitcher’s box was
genuine.
“Chesty is short for Lord Chesterfield,” Walter continued as he
laughingly turned to the other newcomer. “In the catalogue his name
appears as Frank Harwood Hoblit, Jr., but that’s too much of a
mouthful, so we cut it short to ‘Chesty.’ If you ever want to know
what color your necktie ought to be to match your socks, or what the
proper attitude is when you are addressing the President of the United
States, why Chesty is the boy to give you points. He is up on all the
fine points of etiquette. He is little Lord Chesterfield, just called
‘Chesty’ for short.”
“We’re not quite so bad as Walter makes us out,” laughed Ned. “I never
was in a fight in my life――――”
“All the same you want to be good to him,” broke in Walter. “He’s the
kind of a chap you let have the whole sidewalk and never say a word to
if you happen to meet him some dark night.”
“He’s never out at night,” said Frank. “You never saw such a fellow to
sleep. He’s usually in bed before the warning bell rings. I’ve thought
sometimes I might just as well be rooming with a mummy as with him.”
“I have had the same feeling,” retorted Ned, “only I spelled my ‘mummy’
with a ‘d.’”
“You’re lucky to be able to spell it any way,” declared Frank. “He
wrote me this summer, and what do you think? He had the nerve to spell
my middle name Hardwood.”
“I was thinking of Soc’s efforts in your behalf,” laughed Ned.
“Are all the fellows back?” he added turning to Walter. “Chesty and I
just came in and we made a bee-line for your room. Seems like away back
in the Dark Ages since we parted. What have you been doing all summer?”
“I’ve been up at Rodman most of the time, on my grandfather’s farm,”
replied Walter.
“Buried alive?”
“No, sir; not buried alive. Dan and I fished and played ball――that’s
how I made my find. Dan is the best pitcher for a fellow of his age I
ever saw. Moulton has been training him all summer――――”
“What Moulton?” interrupted Ned quickly.
“Moulton of Princeton,” said Walter, trying to speak unconcernedly. “He
says Dan is the most promising young pitcher he has found.”
Plainly impressed by what Walter said, Ned looked at Dan with renewed
interest. He noted the long arm, the wiry form, the evident power and
endurance, and his enthusiasm at once was aroused. “I’m glad you’re
here, Dan,” he said simply. “Of course there isn’t much baseball in
the fall――everything goes to football then. But we have some interform
games; they’re mostly to keep up the spirit of the thing and try out
the new fellows. We’ll give you a chance to show your mettle――――”
“I’m wondering if I shall have any time for baseball,” said Dan simply.
“I’ll probably have to work so hard at my books to keep up with you――――”
“You won’t have to work very hard to keep up with Chesty,” broke in Ned
with a laugh. “It’s nip and tuck between him and Walter here, and me,
to see who’ll lead the class if you turn it wrong end to. And yet I’m
improving some,” declared Ned. “I was down on the shore of Long Island
this summer and took to riding a wheel. One day I was coasting down a
small hill and coming at a pretty good clip, when my wheel struck a
pocket of sand and I took a header before I could say Jack Robinson.
A gentle, antique, old farmer and his boy happened to be passing in a
farm-wagon at the time, and they both got off to see if I was hurt.
‘Hurt ye much?’ the old man asked me. When I told him I was all right
he wanted to know how it happened, and with my exam in physics fresh in
my mind I told him. I said, ‘When I came down that incline and my front
cylindrical means of propulsion struck that pocket of disintegrated
igneous rock my velocity was such that I lost my center of gravity and
was precipitated upon the hard road of asphalt.’”
“What did the old boy say?” laughed Walter.
“‘Say’! For a moment that ancient and antiquated tiller of the soil was
speechless. He hadn’t expected to hear such nice words as I gave him.
Finally the old chap turned to his boy and gently remarked, ‘Come on,
bub, I guess th’ fellow is one o’ them tarnal foreign chaps what can’t
talk United States.’”
“You ought not to excoriate the venerable husbandman after your
providential escape,” said Frank.
“Now, I wasn’t excoriating him. I’m no cannibal!” declared Ned.
“What has a cannibal to do with it?”
“Don’t you know what a cannibal is?”
“I sure do. He is a chap that devours another.”
“Course he is. Well, if a fellow bites another fellow’s back――a sort of
backbiter, so to speak――I’d like to know if he doesn’t at least belong
to the cannibal tribe, though I confess I don’t know whether they begin
their shocking repast at the back or not.”
“You are brilliant to-day, Ned,” laughed Walter. “How do you account
for it?”
“I don’t account for it. Maybe I sharpened my wits up a bit this summer
with all my ‘wading.’”
“Wading?”
“That’s what I said, didn’t I? Wading! W-a-d-ing! No, hold on, that
isn’t the way to spell it. W-a-d-d-ing! That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Depends on whether you mean wading or wadding.”
“I mean wading, all right. I waded all summer long――――”
“Get wet?”
“Not a drop.”
“How is that?”
“I was wading with the accompaniment of a tutor through some of the
dryest books a man ever tackled.”
“You’re the same old Ned,” laughed Walter.
“I’m afraid that’s the worst of it,” said Ned somewhat ruefully. “Dan,”
he added abruptly, turning to the new boy, “when will you come down to
the diamond and give your mighty right arm a chance to show what it can
do?”