This notice appeared on the bulletin board on Monday morning and
provided a deal of amusement and much speculation at Randall’s. Jonesie
was overwhelmed with requests for further particulars and offers
of skilled assistance. In every case Jonesie referred the inquirer
to the notice and informed him that the team was already made up.
Billy Carpenter cornered him in the corridor between recitations
and demanded to know what he meant by such tomfoolery. Jonesie was
surprised and pained.
“Didn’t you agree to play my team on Thursday?” he demanded.
“I was only in fun, you little idiot! A fine lot of ball players you’ll
get! You take that notice down, Jonesie. If you don’t, I will!”
“Seems to me it’s a funny thing to back down now,” replied Jonesie,
more in sorrow than in anger, “after I’ve made the team up and we’re
to begin practice this afternoon. Still, of course, if you are really
afraid to play us――――”
“Who’s on your team?” asked Billy.
Jonesie enumerated the members of the All-Stars and Billy grinned.
“Who’s going to pitch?” he asked.
“Tubby Bumstead.”
Billy’s grin broadened and he clapped Jonesie on the shoulder. “All
right,” he said gaily, “we’ll play you four innings, Jonesie, if you
last that long. It’ll be funny, anyhow, eh?”
“Funny!” said Jonesie indignantly, even a little bitterly. “You think
it’s funny when I go to all this trouble to help you fellows out! I’ve
a good mind not to do it! I’ve a good mind to just let you fellows go
on the way you’re going and get licked by every little whippersnapper
team that comes along, Billy! Funny! Huh! You won’t think it’s so funny
when we lick you!”
“All right, Jonesie,” Billy laughed. “We’ll play you. Who do you want
for an umpire?”
Jonesie shrugged his shoulders. “Any fellow you like. How about Gus
Peasley?”
“Has he ever umpired a game?” asked Billy doubtfully.
“I’ll find out. If you don’t want Gus, though――――”
“Sure, Gus will do. Let’s make it as funny as we can, eh?”
And Billy went off chuckling, leaving Jonesie apparently silent with
indignation.
At noon he sought out Gus Peasley. Gus was an Upper Middler and so, in
a way, might be considered impartial. “Ever umpire a ball game, Gus?”
asked Jonesie.
Gus shook his head. “I was kicked by a mule once, though,” he said with
apparent irrelevancy.
“You’re the fellow we want, then,” said Jonesie with deep conviction,
“to umpire the game on Thursday.”
“Say, are you really going to play the School Team?” asked the other
eagerly. “Why didn’t you give me a show, Jonesie?”
“I agreed to play only lower-classers, Gus. But Billy and I both want
you to umpire.”
“Shucks, I never umpired a game in my life! I’d look fine, wouldn’t I?”
“I’ll lend you a book of rules, Gus, and you can study it a bit. The
game’s on Thursday at three. Don’t forget.”
“But―――― Here! Hold on, you silly idiot! I’m not going to umpire for
you! Don’t be a chump, Jonesie!”
“Why not, when we both want you to? It isn’t anything to do and it’ll
be heaps of fun, Gus.”
“Heaps of fun!” muttered Gus. “Someone’ll bump me on the head with
a bat, I suppose! Well, all right. If you can stand it I can. Don’t
forget those rules, though. Does that book tell when a foul ball is a
strike and all that sort of thing?”
“Surest thing you know! You’ll have it all down pat by Thursday, Gus.
Thanks awfully.”
On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons the All-Stars were supposed
to hold practice, and about three-fourths of the school went down
to the field to enjoy the spectacle. But the All-Stars were not to
be found on any of the afternoons mentioned. That Jonesie and Pinky
Trainor and Tubby Bumstead and all the other members of the team were
busy somewhere seemed probable since none of them was visible around
the school, but they certainly were not on the playing field, and some
six score youths were correspondingly disappointed.
But had any of them penetrated to the Games Room situated on the upper
floor of the Recitation Hall they would have been at once surprised and
interested. There, behind locked doors, the All-Stars were practicing.
The practice was novel, however. Instead of batting and fielding and
sliding to bases, the All-Stars sat in chairs or along the edge of the
billiard table and not a bat nor a ball was to be seen. But Jonesie was
coaching.
“Now, then, take Jimmy Buell. He will play left field for them, I
suppose. Who knows anything about Jimmy?”
No one did, apparently, until young George Wrenn hazarded: “He’s sort
of crazy about golf, isn’t he?”
“That’s so,” agreed Tubby Bumstead. “He’s trying for the team, or he
was in the Fall.”
“That may do,” said Jonesie thoughtfully, making a note on the sheet of
paper beside him. “We may be able to work that up. Anything else?”
Evidently that exhausted Buell and after a moment Jonesie went on.
“The next fellow is Gordon,” he announced.
Several of the All-Stars chuckled, and Jonesie smiled demurely himself.
“Onions!” said Pinky explosively, and the room rang with laughter.
“Onions,” agreed Jonesie. “That’ll do for Gordon, I guess! And that
leaves only Proudfoot, and――――”
“‘Quentin Durward,’” proclaimed Ernest Hoyt, “‘is probably the most
popular work of the great novelist, William Makepeace Thackeray.’”
The All-Stars chuckled and giggled.
“‘A lambkin,’” contributed Sparrow Bowles, “‘is a fleece-bearing
quadruped closely related to the domestic lamb or sheep.’”
“Don’t believe he ever wrote that one,” laughed Tubby.
“Yes, he did, too. Sumner Hayes heard Old Fury read it in class last
year.”
“It’s great, anyway,” applauded Jonesie, scribbling feverishly on his
paper. “Lambkin for Proudfoot’s! There, that’s the lot of ’em. I’ll
have copies of this ready for you fellows to-morrow and then, next day,
we’ll have a quiz. Practice is over!”