THE TOP OF THE WAVE
While they were still discussing the telegram, Joe's father came home to
lunch from the harvester works where he was employed. He seemed ten years
younger than he had before the trip to the World's Series, which he in his
quiet way had enjoyed quite as much as the rest of the family.
He greeted the young men cordially.
"I met a man a little way down the street who seemed to have come from
here," he said, as he hung up his hat. "He had his hat jammed down on his
head, and was muttering to himself as though he were sore about
something."
"He was," replied Jim with a grin. "He laid twenty-five thousand dollars
on the table, and he was sore because Joe wouldn't take it up."
Mr. Matson looked bewildered, but his astonishment was not as great as
that of Clara, who at that moment put her head in the door to announce
that lunch was ready.
"What are you millionaires talking about?" she asked.
"What do millionaires usually talk about?" answered Jim loftily.
"Money--the long green--iron men--filthy lucre--yellowbacks----"
"If you don't stop your nonsense you sha'n't have any lunch," threatened
Clara, "and that means something, too, for mother has spread herself in
getting it up."
"Take it all back," said Jim promptly. "I'm as sober as a judge. Lead me
to this lunch, fair maiden, and I'll tell you nothing but the plain,
unvarnished truth. But even at that, I'm afraid you'll think I'm
romancing."
The merry group seated themselves at the table, and Clara, all alive with
curiosity, demanded the fulfilment of Jim's promise.
"Well," said Jim, "the simple truth is that that fellow who was here this
morning offered Joe sixty-five thousand dollars for three years' work."
Mrs. Matson almost dropped her knife and fork in her amazement. Mr. Matson
sat up with a jerk, and Clara's eyes opened to their widest extent.
"Sixty-five thousand dollars!" gasped Joe's father.
"For three years' work!" exclaimed Mrs. Matson.
"Why," stammered Clara, "that's--that's--let me see--why, that's more than
twenty-one thousand dollars a year."
"That's what," replied Jim, keenly relishing the sensation he was causing.
"And it wasn't stage money either. He had brought twenty thousand dollars
with him in bills, and he laid it down on the table as carelessly as
though it was twenty cents. And all that this modest youth, who sits
beside me and isn't saying a word, had to do to get that money was to put
his name on a piece of paper."
"Joe," exclaimed Clara, "do tell us what all this means! Jim is just
trying to tantalize us."
"Stung!" grinned Jim. "That's what comes from mixing in family matters."
"Why, it's this way, Sis," laughed Joe. "That fellow traveled a thousand
miles to call me a hick. I wouldn't stand for it and made him take it back
and then he got mad and skipped."
"Momsey," begged Clara in desperation, "can't you make these idiots tell
us just what happened?"
"Them cruel woids!" ejaculated Jim mournfully.
"Do tell us, Joe!" entreated his mother. "I'm just dying to know all about
it."
Teasing his mother was a very different thing from teasing Clara, who was
an adept at that art herself, and Joe surrendered immediately.
They forgot to eat--all except Jim, who seldom carried forgetfulness so
far--while he told them about Westland's call and his proposition to Joe
to break his contract and jump to the new league.
Sixty-five thousand dollars was a staggering amount of money, a fortune,
in fact, in that quiet town, and yet there was not one of that little
family who didn't rejoice that Joe had turned the offer down.
"You did the right thing, Joe," said his father heartily; "and the fact
that lots of people would call you foolish doesn't change things in the
least. A man who sells himself for a hundred thousand dollars is just as
contemptible as one who sells himself for a dollar. I'm proud of you, my
boy."
"I could have told beforehand just what Joe would do," said Mrs. Matson,
wiping her eyes.
"You're the darlingest brother ever!" exclaimed Clara, coming round the
table and giving him a hug and a kiss.
The thought of Clara being a sister to him had never appealed to Jim
before, but just at that moment it would have had its advantages.
For the rest of the meal all were engrossed in talking of the great event
of the morning--that is, all but Joe, who kept casting surreptitious
glances at the clock.
"Don't get worried, Joe," said his sister mischievously, as she
intercepted one of his glances. "Mabel's train doesn't get in until
half-past two, and it isn't one o'clock yet."
Joe flushed a little and Jim laughed.
"Can you blame him?" he asked.
"Not a bit," answered Clara. "Mabel's a darling and I'm crazy to get hold
of her. After Joe, though, of course," she added.
Joe threw his napkin at her but missed.
"Sixty-five thousand dollars for a baseball player who can't throw any
straighter than that," she mocked. "It's a lucky thing for the new league
that you didn't take their money."
"Maybe I had better take their money after all!" cried Joe tantalizingly.
At these words Clara threw up her hands in mock horror.
"You just dare, Joe Matson, and I'll disown you!"
"Ah-ha! And now I'm disowned and cast out of my home!" exclaimed the young
baseball player tragically. "Woe is me!"
"I don't believe any decent player would ever have anything to say to you,
Joe, if you did such a mean thing as that," went on Clara seriously. And
at this Joe nodded affirmatively.
An hour later, all three, chatting merrily, were on their way to the
train. But their progress was slow, for at almost every turn they were
stopped by friends who wanted to shake hands with Joe and congratulate him
on his presence of mind the night before.
"One of the penalties of having a famous brother," sighed Clara, when this
had happened for the twentieth time.
"You little hypocrite," laughed Jim. "You know that you're just bursting
with pride. You're tickled to death to be walking alongside of him. Stop
your sighing. Follow my example. I'm tickled to death to be walking
alongside of you and you don't hear _me_ sighing. I feel more like
singing."
"For goodness' sake, don't," retorted Clara in mock alarm. "Oh, dear,
here's another one!"
"Were you addressing me when you said 'dear'?" asked Jim politely.
Clara flashed him an indignant glance, just as Professor Enoch Crabbe, of
the Riverside Academy, stepped up and greeted Joe. He was earnest in his
congratulations, but his manner was so stilted that they looked at each
other with an amused smile, as he stalked pompously away.
"I wonder if he believes now that I can throw a curve," laughed Joe.
"He ought to ask some of the Red Sox who whiffed away at them in the World
Series," said Jim with a grin. "They didn't have any doubt about it."
"Professor Crabbe had very serious doubts," explained Joe. "In fact, he
said it was impossible. Against all the laws of motion and all that sort
of thing. I had to rig up a couple of bamboo rods in a line, and get Dick
Talbot, a friend of mine in the moving-picture business, to take a picture
of the ball as it curved around the rods, before I could prove my point."
"Did it convince him?" queried Jim.
"It stumped him, anyway," replied Joe. "But sometimes I have a sneaking
notion that he thinks yet that Dick and I played some kind of a bunco game
on him by doctoring the film."
"Well, I hope that nobody else stops us," remarked Clara. "It seems to me
that almost everybody in Riverside is on the street this afternoon."
"It wouldn't be such an awful mob at that," replied Jim. "But it's a safe
bet that one man at least won't stop Joe to shake hands with him."
"Who is that?" asked Clara.
"The fellow who yelled 'Fire' in the hall last night," answered Jim with a
grin.
"I hope I didn't hurt him," observed Joe, thoughtfully.
"Perish the thought," replied Jim. "You just caressed him. He was a big
fellow, and he probably sat down just to take a load off his feet."
"I'm glad he wasn't a Riverside man, anyway," remarked Joe, loyal to his
home town. "I never saw him before. Probably he came from some place near
by."
"Oh, then, of course he won't mind it," chaffed Jim.
"Of all the nonsense----" Clara was beginning, when her eye caught sight
of a figure she recognized on the station platform which they had nearly
reached.
She nudged her brother's elbow.
"There's the man you were talking to this morning," she said in a low
voice.
"By George, so it is!" replied Joe, as he followed her glance. "And he's
talking to Altman. Trying to make him a convert."
"A renegade, you mean," growled Jim.