MERSFELD IN THE BOX
There was a wild search in and about the gymnasium on the part of Bill,
his brothers and his chums, but of course the missing glasses were not
found.
“Are you sure you dropped them here?” asked Cap, as he went over again
the room which his brother had used as a dressing department before and
after the shower bath.
“Well, I’m not sure, of course,” answered Bill, “but they’re gone, and
I must have dropped them somewhere.”
They went over the place inch by inch, looked in odd nooks and corners
and inquired of the janitors and helpers, but the spectacles were not
found.
“Say,” cried Whistle-Breeches with sudden illumination, “I’ll bet you
dropped them that time we were all fooling on the campus!”
“By Jinks! I believe I did!” cried Bill, and he made a mad dash for the
place. The others followed and soon the lads were scanning the grass,
going about on their hands and knees. From a vantage point Mersfeld and
North watched.
“He’s missed ’em all right,” exulted the deposed pitcher.
“Sure, and he’ll look a good while for ’em, too.”
“Think he’ll suspect us?”
“Not a bit of it,” replied North. He started toward the group of
searching lads.
“Here! Where are you going?” cried his companion in alarm.
“Going over to help ’em hunt.”
“Come back! Do you want to give the whole thing away, just when I’ve
got a last chance to get back on the nine?”
“Give it away, you chump! Why the best way to throw ’em off the track,
and make ’em feel sure that we had nothing to do with it is to help
Bill look for his glasses. Come on. It’ll be a joke, but they can’t
appreciate it.”
Somewhat dubious of the plan, Mersfeld followed North, who strolled up
to Bill. The Varsity pitcher’s face wore a worried look.
“Lose something?” asked North innocently.
“Yes, my glasses. They must have dropped out of my pocket when we were
skylarking here.”
“That’s too bad!” and North winked at Mersfeld. “We’ll help you look.”
“Sure,” agreed the deposed pitcher, and the two hypocrites went
carefully over the ground, laughing to themselves as they thought of
the glasses in the muzzle of the cannon.
Darkness came and the search had to be given up. Puzzled as to what
could have happened to his glasses, uselessly and mechanically feeling
in pocket after pocket, Bill accompanied his brothers back to his room.
Mersfeld and North went off together.
“Well, what are you going to do?” asked Pete, as he looked at the
pitcher.
“I don’t know what to do,” and Bill’s tone was despondent.
“Maybe you can get along without them now, for the few remaining
games,” suggested Cap.
“No,” and Bill shook his head. “I’ll need them, for I tried to pitch
without them to-day, and my curves were away off. And as for the
remaining games—they’re the most important of the season. We’ve just
_got_ to win them to make good and keep the pennant. I don’t see what
could have happened to the glasses.”
“You might have lost them anywhere between the diamond and here,” said
Whistle-Breeches. “We’ll look again in the morning.”
“Say!” cried Pete. “Can’t you get some oculist in town to fix you up
a pair that will do? It can’t be that they were such peculiar glasses
that they can’t be duplicated.”
“Maybe not,” half-agreed Bill, “but the old rain-maker-astronomer said
the lenses had to be ground in a certain way, and I don’t know where he
had them made.”
“We’ll try some one in town,” went on Cap. “I believe they can fix you
up,” and they spent some time talking of that possibility.
Bill was worried, and with good reason. He wanted to maintain his
position as pitcher, and he knew he could not do so if he did not
“deliver the goods.” That he could pitch without the glasses he did
not believe, but he was anxious for morning to come that he might test
himself again.
Bright and early he and Cap went out to the diamond, not only to look
for the glasses but to do some work with the horsehide. It is needless
to say that the glasses were not recovered, and to Bill’s despair he
found that he was throwing wild.
“It won’t do,” spoke Cap despondently, as he tossed back the ball which
he had had to reach away outside of the plate to gather in.
“No, I guess not,” agreed his brother. “It’s either a new pair of specs
for me, or—some one else in the box.”
“We’ll try to get a new pair of glasses first,” suggested Cap, as
cheerfully as he could.
An oculist whom they consulted, but not the one to whom they had first
gone after the accident, looked grave when he had tested Bill’s eyes,
and heard the story of the blow.
“Of course I can fit you with glasses,” he said, “but it may take some
time to get them just right.”
“How long?” asked the pitcher anxiously.
“A week—perhaps two.”
“It won’t do!” declared Bill. “Why the last Sandrim game comes off in
three days, and a week later the final with the Tuckerton nine. I’ve
got to pitch in both.”
The oculist shrugged his shoulders.
“I’ll do my best,” he said. “The lenses will have to be specially
ground. If I knew where the others were made I could get them from
there.”
But the astronomer had failed to say where he had had Bill’s glasses
made, and there was nothing for it but to try some other lens-making
place. Meanwhile the oculist said he would temporarily fit Bill with a
pair of glasses.
But when the pitcher tried to use them, his curves were worse off than
before, and with despair in his heart he laid aside the spectacles.
“I’ll have to wait for the others,” he said.
“But what about the game with Sandrim?” asked Captain Graydon. “Can
you pitch for us?”
Bill shook his head, and said nothing. The captain and coach looked at
each other.
“We’ll have to put Mersfeld back in the box,” decided Mr. Windam
dubiously.
“Yes, and he’ll have to practice hard every spare minute, and even
then—” The captain did not finish, but they knew what he meant.
It was with wild and ill-concealed exultation in his heart that
Mersfeld received orders to take his old place.
“Now it’s up to you to make good!” said North to him.
“And I’ll do it, too!” was the fierce response. “Bill Smith shan’t get
his hands on the ball again.”
Mersfeld began hard and steady practice, and, whether it was that the
rest had done him good, or whether he had improved did not develop, but
there was a more hopeful look on the faces of the captain and coach.
“We may do Sandrim yet,” said Graydon, “and if Bill can get his glasses
in time for the Tuckerton game we may pull out ahead.”
“I hope so, but it’s going to be a hard row to hoe.”
Bill and his brothers and friends made strenuous efforts in the little
while that remained to get the glasses in time, but there was a delay,
the lenses were not ready, and when the day of the final game with
Sandrim arrived Mersfeld was in the box.
Bill sat on the bench, bitterness in his heart, his fingers fairly
aching to get hold of the ball. But he knew that his eyes were
practically useless.
It was a hard game, and Westfield won it only by the hardest kind of
work, and the narrow margin of one run. It was due more to the support
Mersfeld got than to his pitching that he pulled the contest out of
the fire, and at one time, when Sandrim had three men on bases, and
none out it looked like a walk-over for them.
But Cap, who was behind the bat, and Pete, at short, were towers of
strength, and once more the Smith boys, even though the trio was
broken, demonstrated their worth.
“Now, if we can take Tuckerton’s scalp we’ll be all right,” remarked
the coach to the captain, as they strolled off the diamond after the
game.
“Yes, but we need Bill. Oh, if his eyes would only get right again!”
“Yes, or if he can only get his glasses in time.”
It was three days later before the oculist had the special lenses, and
Bill tried them hopefully. At first they seemed to be all right, but
after he had pitched a few balls Cap called to him:
“Get ’em over a little better, Bill. That last one was quite a ways
out.”
“What’s the matter? Why it went right over the plate!”
Pete who was behind Cap, watching his brother’s curves started, and the
oldest Smith lad shook his head. Then Bill knew that the glasses were
not the same.
“I guess it’s all up,” he said despondently. “I’m out of it.”
“No!” cried Cap. “We’ll help you!”
“What can you do?” Bill wanted to know. “There’s no use having this
oculist try it again.”
“No, but we’ll find Professor Clatter and Tithonus Somnus and get him
to make a right pair of glasses. That’s our last chance!”
“And a mighty slim one, too!” murmured Bill, “with the final game only
a few days off!”