“The only th-thing is,” said Fudge, “it’s going to co-cost a heap, isn’t it?”

Fudge, whose real name was William Shaw, was fifteen years of age, had sandy-red hair and blue eyes and was short of stature and round of body. His habitual expression was one of pleased surprise, due probably to the fact that his blue eyes were very blue and very big. When Fudge was the least bit excited he stammered, but the habit was too slight to be an affliction, and his friends sometimes got Fudge upset in order to enjoy his facial contortions when the word wouldn’t come promptly. It was Lansing White who, several years before in grammar school, had dubbed him Fudge. Lanny declared that “pshaw” and “fudge” meant the same thing and that “fudge” was more novel. At the present moment Fudge was seated in the apple tree which grew by the fence where the Shaws’ side-yard and the Merricks’ back-yard came together. It was a favorite retreat with Fudge, and he had built a shelf handy to the comfortable crotch he affected on which to place books and papers when, as was customary, he was studying his lessons there. To-day, however, as school was over for the summer, there were no books about and the shelf bore, instead, a tennis racket which Fudge had been mending when Gordon found him.

“I don’t see why,” replied Gordon, leaning his arms on the top of the fence. “We’ve all got our High School uniforms and we’ve all got bats and mitts and things. All we’d need to spend money on would be balls, I guess. Of course, when we went away every fellow would have to pay his transportation.”

“M-meaning carfare?” queried Fudge. “Say, it’s a peach of a scheme, Gordie! I wish I could bat better, though. Maybe I’ll get on to it, eh? I guess what I need is practice.” And Fudge, swinging an imaginary bat at an invisible ball, almost fell off the branch. “Who’s going to be captain?” he asked when he had recovered his equilibrium.

“We’ll vote, I suppose,” replied Gordon.

Fudge grinned. “Then it’ll be me. I’m awfully popular. Have you told Lanny yet?”

“Yes, and he says if you play center there’s got to be a rule that a hit to center field is good for only three bases.”

Fudge snorted indignantly. “If he ever hit a ball as far as the outfield he’d fall in a faint! When do we start?”

“I’ve got to see the other fellows yet. Harry is working in his father’s store and I don’t know whether his dad will let him play.”

“That’s so. We need him, too. He’s a peach of a baseman. Who’s going to play short?”

“I want Pete Robey to,” replied Gordon doubtfully. “Think he’d do, Fudge?”

“We-ell, Pete isn’t so much of a muchness. Why don’t you p-put him in center and let me play short?”

“Because a fellow has to have brains to play in the infield, Fudge, and——”

Fudge tried to reach him with the racket, failed and, composing his features to an expression of grave interest, asked: “Won’t it be awfully hard to find anyone to play first?”

Gordon smiled. “Never you mind about first. Get your wheel and let’s go around and see some of the fellows. We can catch Harry at the store if we hurry. I want to see Tom, too. If he won’t go into it and pitch for us we might as well give it up.”

“Oh, Tom’ll pitch all right,” answered Fudge, dropping from the tree, racket in hand. “He’d rather pitch a baseball than eat. I’ll meet you out front in two minutes.”

He wormed his way through the currant bushes to the garden path and disappeared toward the house, while Gordon, dodging the clothes lines strung near the rear fence, went along the brick walk and gained the side porch by the simple expedient of vaulting the railing. The Merrick house was new—most of the residences on that end of Troutman Street were—and was mildly pretentious. Mr. Merrick was a lawyer and comfortably well-to-do. The family had lived in Clearfield for six generations and had given its name to one of the principal streets in the downtown business part of the city. I refer to Clearfield as a city, and it really was, but it was not a very large city. The latest census credited it with something over 17,000 inhabitants. Like many New England cities of its kind, it owed its growth and prosperity to factories of various sorts. Mill River, which entered the bay two miles distant, flowed along the edge of the town and provided water-power for a number of large manufacturing plants, knitting mills, a sewing machine factory, a silverware factory and several others.

The knitting mills were largely owned by Mr. Brent, the Honorable Jonathan Brent, as the Clearfield Reporter usually referred to him, and while Gordon had spoken of Mr. Brent “owning the town,” he had, of course, exaggerated, but still had not been very far wide of the mark. Mr. Brent was Clearfield’s richest and its leading citizen. Besides the knitting mills he controlled two banks and the street railway and lighting service and had a finger—usually two or three fingers—in many other enterprises. The Brent residence, standing imposingly in a whole block of land, was visible, further along Troutman Street, from the Merricks’ porch. In this, the more recently developed part of the town, the wide streets were lined with maples as yet too young to afford much shade, but a giant elm tree, which had been old long before Clearfield even thought of growing away from the river, stood just inside the Merricks’ front gate and effectively screened the house from the hot sunlight.

Gordon contented himself with putting his head inside the screen door and announcing in a loud voice: “Mother, I’m going downtown. Is there anything you want?” Mrs. Merrick’s voice floated down from upstairs in reply: “No, dear; but please try to be on time for dinner. You know your father dislikes——”

But Gordon didn’t hear the rest of it. He didn’t need to. He knew what his father disliked. His father disliked having him late for his meals, disliked his going out in the evenings, disliked—oh, so many things! Gordon sighed as he mounted his wheel. Life was really extremely difficult at times!

He was a well-built, athletic youth of fifteen years, with a pleasant, clean-cut face, dark brown eyes and hair and a well-tanned skin. He looked very much alive and rather enthusiastic, just the sort of a boy, in short, to undertake and carry through successfully such an enterprise as the formation of the Clearfield Baseball Club.

Fudge was waiting for him around the corner, and they set off together in search of Tom Haley. Tom lived in what folks called the East End, which was that section of the town near the railroad largely inhabited by workers in the mills and factories. Tom’s father was a foreman in the sewing-machine works, and the family occupied a tiny story-and-a-half cottage so close to the railroad tracks that it shook whenever the trains passed. Fortunately they found Tom at home, very busily engaged repairing the front steps, surrounded by carpenter’s tools and three junior members of the Haley family. He rescued the chisel from Tille, aged four, deprived the baby of a handful of nails, told George, aged six, to stop sawing the chair leg, and greeted his visitors.

Tom was sixteen, big, broad-shouldered and raw-boned, with an angular face and high cheek-bones liberally speckled with freckles. At present he was minus coat and vest and wore a pair of blue overalls. “You kids get in the house now,” he instructed the suddenly silent trio of youngsters, “and tell your mother to keep you in there, too. You’ve bothered me enough. Shoo, the whole lot of you!”

They went, with many backward glances, and Tom cleared a space on the edge of the unrailed porch for Gordon and Fudge. “Say, it’s some warm, isn’t it? What you fellows up to to-day? Going to the pond?”

“No, we’re calling on you,” replied Fudge.

“Much obliged. What’s the game?”

“Baseball,” said Gordon. “We’re getting up a team to play the Rutter’s Point fellows and we want you to join, Tom.”

“I don’t mind, if there isn’t much practice. There’s a lot to be done around the house here this summer. We’re going to shingle next week, and after that we’ll paint. Who’s on the team?”

Gordon explained all about it, read Bert Cable’s letter and Caspar Billings’ and told Tom the line-up of the nine as he had planned it.

“Sounds all right,” said Tom. “When are you going to start?”

“Right away. If you’ll pitch for us we’ll be all right. I’ll answer Billings’ letter and tell him we’ll meet him a week from Wednesday. That’ll give us a whole week for practicing.”

“All right, I’m with you, only don’t expect me to practice much, Gordon. I’m pretty busy. I’ll come out a couple of times, though; say—let me see—say Friday and Monday. Going to use the school field?”

“Yes. I don’t suppose anyone will object?”

“Don’t see why they should. You’d better see Mr. Grayson, though.”

“I will. No, that will be up to Dick. He’s going to be manager.”

“Dick Lovering?” asked Tom, in surprise. “Well, I don’t see why not. He can get around all right. Have you asked him?”

“Yes, and he said he would. The only thing is, Tom, we’ll have to pay his expenses if we go away from home very far. I told him we would. It wouldn’t be much if we shared it. You see, Dick doesn’t have much money. I guess they’re pretty hard-up. His father only left them that house they’re in and a little insurance money, and of course Dick can’t do much to earn any.”

“He told me the other day,” said Fudge, “that he was trying to get work tutoring this summer over at the Point. He could do that finely if he could find anyone to toot. Hope he does. Dick’s a peach.”

“Then we’ll have first practice Wednesday, the rest of us, and we’ll look for you Friday, Tom. I’ve got to catch Harry before he goes home. Maybe his father won’t let him off. If he won’t we’ll be in a bad way for a second baseman.”

“If you hold practice late—say, half-past four—I guess Harry could get there,” said Tom. “And we wouldn’t play more than twice a week, I suppose. Who else are you going after besides the Pointers?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Lesterville. They’ve got a pretty good club over there. I guess we can find games enough, Tom.”

“I suppose the Springdale team has disbanded,” said Tom. “I’d like to get another whack at those fellows!”

“So would I,” Gordon agreed. “We never should have lost that last game, Tom. We all played like idiots, though. Six errors is going some!”

“It was an off-day with me, all right,” grumbled Tom. “I couldn’t put ’em over the plate to save my life in the last four innings.”

“We’ll lick them at football this fall,” asserted Fudge.

“Bound to,” agreed Tom, with a sly wink at Gordon. “Fudge is going to play, you know.”

“You bet I am!” exclaimed Fudge. “I’m going to p-p-play end. I’m g-g-going——”

“So am I,” laughed Gordon. “Right now. Come along, Fudge, and we’ll hunt up Harry. I’m glad you’ll come in with us, Tom. By the way, I suppose we ought to have a sort of meeting to organize pretty soon. How would it do if you all came to my house to-morrow evening? We’ll have to choose a captain and—and talk things over.”

“Oh, you’ll be captain,” said Tom. “It’s your scheme. Besides, who else is there?”

“You, or Harry, or Will Scott, or——”

“Shucks, they’re not made for it. It’ll be either you or Lansing, I guess. Anyway, I’ll be over to-morrow, if you say so, about eight. So long. I’ve got to get these boards down before dinner.”

They found Harry Bryan in his father’s grocery. He, too, was very busy, but he stopped putting up orders long enough to hear Gordon’s tale, and was instantly enthusiastic.

“I’ll have to ask my dad, though,” he said doubtfully. “He’s keeping me pretty close to business,” he added importantly.

“What do you do, Harry?” asked Fudge. “Put the sand in the sugar?”

Harry treated the insult with silent contempt. “I’ll ask him to-night, though,” he continued, “and let you know.”

“Telephone me, will you? We’ll have practice late in the afternoon, Harry. You wouldn’t have to get away until after four.”

“I know. I guess he will let me. He ought to.” Harry observed the yellow slips in his hand somberly. “I’ve been working pretty hard, I tell you.”

“I should think,” suggested the irrepressible Fudge, “that if you worked late to-night you could sand enough sugar to last the week out!”

“Say, they’re not going to let you play, are they, Fudge?”

“How could they do without me?”

“It’ll be a peach of a nine!” jeered Harry. He was only a year older than Fudge, but pretended to regard that youth with amused toleration, and so caused Fudge deep annoyance at times.

“Well, we’ve got eight good ones,” responded Fudge sweetly. “If we could only find a fellow to play second base, we’d be all right.”

“It’s a wonder they don’t put you there.”

“Oh, I was offered the position, bu-but I didn’t want it. I prefer the outfield. There’s more re-re-responsibility there.”

“You’re a wonder!” said Harry. “What would you do if a ball came your way? Hold your mouth open and try to swallow it?”

“You wa-wait and see! If I co-co-couldn’t catch a b-b-ball better th-th-than you——”

“Calm yourself, Fudge! You’re off your trolley again! I’ll be around to-morrow night, Gordon. Now I’ll have to get busy. Watch Fudge as he goes out, will you? Last time he was in he got away with three or four pounds of prunes.”

“I took three of the old th-th-th-things,” said Fudge bitterly, “and they n-n-nearly killed me!”

They left Harry surrounded by baskets, frowning over the order slips in his hand, and made their way back to the sidewalk and their wheels. As it was almost noon, Gordon decided not to risk his father’s displeasure by seeing any more of the fellows before dinner, and he and Fudge pedaled home, Fudge still sputtering about those prunes.

At a little after four that afternoon Gordon was back at Dick’s to report success. All the members of the Clearfield Ball Club had agreed to play and to attend the organization meeting the next evening—all, that is, save Harry Bryan, who was to telephone later.

“Now, Dickums, if you’ll write to Billings and tell him——”

“If I’ll write!”

Gordon laughed. “Of course; you’re the manager, aren’t you?”

“Humph! So I have to attend to the correspondence too, do I? It seems to me that you ought to write that letter. Bert sent it to you, and you’re captain, and——”

“Well, that’s what I thought,” responded Gordon cheerfully, “until I got to thinking it over. Then I remembered that you were manager, and, of course, managers always attend to arranging contests; and there you are. Just tell him we’ll play his team on Wednesday the sixteenth, Dickums, at the Point.”

“All right. I might call on him and tell him about it, though, for I’m going over to the Point in the morning.”

“You are? What for?”

“To get a job, I hope. You know I got them to put up a notice in the hotel over there for me: ‘tutoring in French, Mathematics, and English; references; terms on request.’ This afternoon a Mrs. Townsend called me up by telephone, and she wants me to come over in the morning and see about coaching her son. He’s going to Rifle Point School in the Fall and is weak on English and Math. He’s thirteen, she says. She seemed to think the price was all right, but she wants me to have a look at the youngster first. Sounded as though she was afraid I wouldn’t like him. I’d coach a Bengal tiger if I got paid for it. I need the money, Gordie.”

“That’s fine! Then why not see Billings instead of writing to him? You could arrange the whole thing in five minutes. Do you know where he lives?”

“No, but they can tell me at the hotel, I guess. By the way, why do you want to play over there? Why not have them come over here?”

“Because I saw Mr. Grayson awhile ago and asked him if it would be all right if we used the school field, and he said it would as far as he was concerned, but that he’d just got notice from Mr. Brent that they are going to cut the field up pretty soon for building lots. I suppose we could use it until they begin to build on it, but I haven’t seen Mr. Brent yet, and I thought it would be safer to say we’d play them at the Point. They’ll probably want another game, and then, if it’s all right about the field, we could play them here.”

“But that will leave us without an athletic field!” exclaimed Dick, in dismay. “I thought we had a lease or something on it.”

“Mr. Grayson says not. Says Mr. Brent just agreed to let us use it as long as it wasn’t needed for anything else. Now he wants it put in the market for house lots. Rather tough, isn’t it? I guess we can find another field somewhere, though.”

“Not in town,” said Dick. “We’ll probably have to go across the river somewhere. There are plenty of fields over there, but they’re as rough as the dickens. What did Mr. Grayson say about that?”

“Nothing much. He seemed to think it was up to the Athletic Committee.”

“Perhaps it is, but he’s principal, and——”

“Shucks, he wouldn’t care a lot if we didn’t have a field, I guess!”

“I don’t think that, Gordie. Grayson’s not very keen about our athletics, I know, but he’s been pretty decent, just the same. We’ll have to get busy right away and find a new place. The football fellows will want to start practice in something like two months. Does Way know about it?”

“I don’t know. I saw Grayson after I left Way. I don’t believe he does, for he didn’t say anything. He will have to get the committee together and have a meeting, I guess. Who’s on it now?”

“Aren’t you?”

“No, not this year. There’s Way, and Harry, and Bert——”

“Well, Bert can’t come. I think Will Scott is on it, isn’t he?”

“Maybe; he probably is if Way belongs. Well, it’s up to Way. I thought I’d ask Mr. Brent if we could keep on using the field for a while; or have Morris ask him. I dare say he’d be more likely to say yes if Morris asks him. Come to think of it, Dickums, as you’re manager——”

“No, you don’t! I wouldn’t beard old man Brent in his den for a hundred dollars! If I’ve got to do that, I’ll resign!”

“All right, then, I’ll do it!” laughed Gordon. “Or I’ll see Morris about it. I don’t see why he needs to cut up that field, though. Seems to me there are enough houses in this town already.”

“Wants the money, probably. Bet you Jonathan Brent would cut up the Garden of Eden for house lots if he had it!”

“You don’t seem to care a whole lot for Mr. Brent, Dickums.”

“I don’t,” responded Dick emphatically. “We wouldn’t be like we are now—as poor as church mice—if father hadn’t got mixed up with Mr. Brent in one of his real-estate schemes. I’m not saying that Mr. Brent was dishonest, Gordie, but he was too sharp for dad, and dad got let in for a pile of money.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Gordon. “You never told me, did you?”

“No. It was a long time ago, when I was just a kid. Dad moved here from Norwalk when I was three years old. He had quite a little money—thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars it was—and Mr. Brent got him to invest it in that South-west Division, as they called it. They got hold of a pile of land down the river toward the Point. You know; where the picnic grove is. They were going to sell it for factory sites and there was a railway coming through to connect with the Shore Line, and everything was fine—on paper. But the bottom fell out of the scheme; the factories didn’t come, and the railroad decided not to build; and the mortgages were foreclosed; and after it was all over Mr. Brent had the whole thing and dad had nothing! And it was all legal and above-board, too! And that’s why I’ve never had much use for Jonathan Brent; nor Morris, either, although Morris has never done anything to me.”

“You and he seem to be pretty good friends,” said Gordon.

“I know. He—— Well, he seems to like me pretty well, and you can’t be anything but decent to a fellow in that case, can you? I suppose if Jonathan Brent wasn’t his father I’d like him well enough. Well, I’ll stop in and see this Billings chap to-morrow. It’s less trouble than writing a letter, I guess. Wednesday the sixteenth, on their own grounds, at—what time?”

“Three o’clock, I suppose,” answered Gordon. “That will give us plenty of time to get over on the two-o’clock car and warm up a bit before the game. You might tell him about our field, and say that if they want a return game we’ll play it over here if we can get the use of the field. By the way, that grandstand at the field belongs to the school. We’ll have to move that if we get out. I wish Mr. Brent would be satisfied with all the money he’s got and not go and take our field away from us.”

“So do I. What we want to do, though, is to watch out and be sure he doesn’t swipe the grandstand too!”

“Well, you are rabid!” laughed Gordon. “Still, I don’t know that I blame you. I never knew that about your father, Dickums.”

“Well, don’t repeat it, please. It’s all done with now, and there’s no use talking about it. I don’t—very often. Only sometimes—— Well, I get sort of hot under the collar when I think of all the money Jonathan Brent has and how awfully hard we have to scrabble to get along. Good-bye, Mr. Captain.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Manager. I’m not captain, though.”

“You will be,” laughed Dick. “You always are, you know!”