The new department started up the last week in March, and none too soon. It had been a hard, cold winter, but its very severity seemed to wear it out along toward the first of that month and a succession of spring-like days turned boys’ thoughts toward baseball. The advertisement had appeared in the March issue of the Brown-and-Blue and the daily papers had made announcement of the fact that Cummings and Wright had installed the most thorough, up-to-date sporting goods department to be found in the state. This was perhaps an exaggeration, but advertisements are prone to exaggerate. It was a pretty thoroughly stocked department, though. Tom had been both surprised and a little alarmed when the catalogues from dealers and manufacturers had reached him. There were so many, many more things to be purchased than he had dreamed of! He had begun a list and then stopped appalled by the magnitude of the order and the size of the total cost, and had gone to Mr. Cummings in perturbation.

“How much? Over four hundred dollars?” asked Mr. Cummings. “Can we sell the things if we get them?”

“Why, yes, sir; I hope so. I think so. I don’t see why——”

“Then get them.”

And Tom got them, and the grand total of the investment was not four hundred dollars, or a little over, but nearly six hundred! And for a week or so poor Tom woke up at night bathed in a cold perspiration after a nightmare in which he saw himself buried under a deluge of sporting goods that no one would buy! It was an anxious time at first. Tom viewed the crowded shelves and showcases and felt his heart sink, for six hundred dollars seemed a frightfully large sum of money to him and he was constantly wondering whether the firm would be able to survive if the goods didn’t sell! He need not have worried about that, but he didn’t know it then.

He had put in a line of baseball goods that was as complete as it was possible to have it. There were bats of all grades and prices, balls, masks, gloves, mitts, chest protectors, base-bags, score-books, and a dozen lesser things, all more or less necessary for the conduct of the national pastime. But baseball goods were only a part of that stock. Golf made its demands as well, although Tom had held back there somewhat, and the wants of the tennis enthusiast had to be provided for. Then the captain of the high school track team had asked about running shoes and attire, and Tom had supplemented his first order. There seemed, in short, no end to what he must buy and keep in stock if Cummings and Wright’s was really to have a fully equipped department. And Tom groaned at the thought of what would happen when autumn came and he had to think of football goods! Already he had been forced to ask for a third section of shelves!

But Mr. Cummings appeared quite untroubled, and so Tom dared to hope. Even Mr. Wright seemed undismayed by the crowded shelves and took an unusual interest in the goods, pulling them out of place—and leaving them out, too—asking questions as to purpose and price and trying Tom sorely at busy times. And then, quite suddenly, his fears vanished. A Saturday morning came and, as it seemed to the anxious manager of the sporting goods department (that was Joe’s title for him), half of juvenile Amesville poured into the store. Tom was busy that day; busy and happy! Many of the boys came only to look and covet, but there were plenty of sales for all that and the day’s total footed up to forty-three dollars. After that Tom ceased worrying and within a week was sending more orders. The manager of the baseball team came to him and asked prices on new uniforms for the players. He found Tom at a loss, but a reference to catalogues soon put him in position to talk business and in the end, not then, but three days later, he began to take orders. Every fellow on the team had to buy and pay for his own uniform and, as Cummings and Wright’s had been declared the proper place to purchase—Tom having made a special price on an order of nine or more suits—the fellows soon began putting their names down. Grey shirts and trousers and caps, brown and blue striped stockings, and grey webbed belts comprised the outfit and the price was four dollars and a quarter. At first one or two fellows who had last year’s suits in good preservation held off, but Spencer Williams, the manager, bullied them, and, when Tom displayed one of the outfits in the window, they fell into line. There was scant profit on those outfits, but Tom called it “good business” and was satisfied.

As complete as the stock was, Tom was continually having demands for things he hadn’t got. As when a fussy, grey-whiskered little gentleman came in and demanded “an aluminum putter.” Poor Tom didn’t know what an aluminum putter was, but he didn’t say so. Instead he regretted the fact that he couldn’t supply one just then and ended, after the fussy gentleman had fussed to his heart’s content, by taking the customer’s order for one. Later he dipped into a catalogue and found it listed. But Tom’s way made a friend of the golfer and he was a constant and heavy purchaser of balls and clubs after that.

Later on orders came in frequently by mail from the towns around, proving that the department had acquired more than a purely local fame. In Amesville the grammar school boys followed the lead of their older brothers in most things and they were quick to emulate them in patronising Cummings and Wright’s. Cummings and Wright’s, in fact, received from the high school a sort of official recognition. It was the first of the hardware stores to advertise in the school monthly, although another dropped into line later, and the students, following the Brown-and-Blue’s slogan, “Patronise our advertisers,” quickly adopted it as a place to make purchasers of not only athletic goods, but other supplies as well. Boys became so accustomed to going there that by the middle of spring the store was a general meeting-place, a sort of high-school headquarters. It was Sidney who first suggested to Tom that the latter offer to post school notices in the window. After that, and more especially when the athletic activities were at their height, one could always find one or more bulletins pasted against the glass there, such as, “A. H. S. B. A. Practice to-day at three-thirty sharp. No cuts.” Or, “A. H. S. T. T. Candidates for the Track Team report at four o’clock Wednesday.” Following up this idea, Tom began posting the scores of the baseball games throughout the country, both professional and collegiate.

Mr. Cummings had had a carpenter divide the window at the right of the doorway in two with a neat oak panel and Tom had some twenty-five square feet of space therein in which to display his goods. At first Joe Gillig dressed the window for him, for Tom doubted his own ability, but presently the latter did it himself and managed to make a far more attractive display than Joe by not crowding his goods and by confining each week the display to some one branch of sport or some one article in variety.

When, as happened late in the spring, a sporting goods house in the East sent a demonstrator to exhibit a home exercising outfit in the window, the store and Tom’s department in particular received a whole lot of free advertising from the papers, while the crowds that assembled daily to watch the good-looking young athlete in the window go through his motions with the exerciser made many other merchants along Main Street green with envy. But this was in May, and several things happened before that that should be set down here.

Tom had hardly hoped for a raise of more than one dollar in his weekly wages and so when Mr. Cummings duly announced to him that beginning with the first day of April his salary would be just doubled Tom’s surprise was even greater than his delight.

“It don’t seem as if I was worth that much yet, sir,” he said doubtfully. “It isn’t as if I was here all day, you see.”

“Tom,” replied Mr. Cummings, “at the risk of giving you what you youngsters call a swelled head, I’m going to tell you that in the four or five hours you are here you do about as much work as a good many clerks in this town do all day. Besides, we’re paying you, partly, for that sporting-goods idea of yours. It was a mighty good idea and it made money for us, and I guess it’s going to make more. Besides that, son, you want to remember that summer is coming after awhile and that summer is a pretty busy season with us. Then you’ll be here all day and you can make up any time you think you may be owing us.”

“Well, it’s awfully good of you,” said Tom gratefully. “And I guess you’d better keep out a dollar now instead of fifty cents toward that pump. I won’t need the whole five dollars,” he added in rather awed tones. Five dollars a week seemed a veritable fortune to him just then, for of late his resources had been getting smaller and smaller and he had begun to wonder if he would ever get through the spring.

Meanwhile, he had made many acquaintances and some friends. At high school he was a person of prominence. The older boys admired his pluck and industry and liked him for his quiet, contained manner, his cheerfulness, and his unfailing good-nature. The younger chaps frankly envied him because he was at home amongst such a raft of captivating things; bats and balls and mitts and rackets and running shoes and all the objects coveted by a small boy—and many a large one. Besides Tom himself, and, naturally, the partners in the firm, I think the person who took the most interest in the sporting goods department of Cummings and Wright’s was Sidney Morris. Sidney had watched and advised and even helped unpack the goods and arrange them on the shelves and in the cases, and all the time had been filled with a fine enthusiasm and optimism. Sidney jeered at the idea of failure and bewailed the fate that kept him from taking his place beside Tom behind the counter.

“I’ll just bet anything I could sell goods,” he declared enviously. “Do you suppose Mr. Cummings would give me a place this summer, Tom?”

“Why, you’ll be going to the Lakes,” said Tom. “You told me just the other day that you would.”

Sidney scowled. “I won’t if I can get out of it,” he said. “I’d a heap rather stay here in town and help you. I wonder if Dad would let me!”

Handling the goods he did, it is not to be wondered at that Tom grew interested in athletic sports and events. Although he had never witnessed a baseball game, save such impromptu affairs as he had participated in with his mates at the country school, when the home plate was a flat rock stolen from the stone wall and the bases were empty tin cans or blocks of wood, nor seen an athletic meeting, nor had more than the haziest notion of what one did with a golf club, he nevertheless developed a keen interest in all these things and perused the sporting news in the papers with a fine devotion. At least he could talk understandingly about baseball and track and field sports, which was a handy thing, since the group of boys who got into the habit of meeting at the sporting goods counter in Cummings and Wright’s were forever thrashing over those subjects. I don’t mean that he offered opinions unsolicited, for that wasn’t Tom’s way. Nor did he ever affect knowledge he didn’t possess. When he didn’t understand a subject he let it alone. If appealed to on a point beyond him, he acknowledged his ignorance. The result was that when he did say anything fellows listened to him respectfully, and it came to be a settled conviction that if Tom Pollock said a thing was so, why, it was so!

It was the one big regret of Tom’s life in those days that he was not able to go out with the others and take part in their sports. He’d liked to have tried for the ball team, and seen what he could do over the hurdles or grasping a vaulting pole or putting one of the big iron shots. He’d even have liked to play golf! And all he knew about golf was that you hit a small white ball with a cruelly large-headed club, why or where to being beyond him! The nearest compensation came in the evenings after a hastily-eaten supper. Then he and Sidney, and sometimes a third or fourth fellow, took bat and ball to the vacant lot near Sidney’s house and had a fine time as long as the spring twilight lasted. Tom had gone to the extravagance of purchasing for himself a catcher’s mitt at wholesale price, and Sidney, who played left field on the high school team that spring and fancied himself a bit as a pitcher, would station Tom against the tumble-down fence and “put ’em over” to him. Sidney had more speed than skill, though, and Tom had lots of exercise reaching for wild ones. It was good practice, however, for Sidney and much fun for Tom. When other chaps showed up one of them would bat flies or grounders to the rest. Sometimes enough boys were present to permit of what they called “fudge,” each taking his turn at fielding, playing first base, pitching, catching, and batting. Tom’s enthusiasm for a recreation in which the rest might indulge at almost any time but which was forbidden to him, save at infrequent times, worked for proficiency and it wasn’t long before he could knock up high flies or crack out hot liners as unerringly as the best. As for fielding, he soon acquired quite a local reputation, a fact which helped him in a business way, adding, as it did, to the authority on athletic affairs already popularly bestowed upon him.

It was when he and Sidney were pitching and catching one evening that something occurred which had a far more important effect on Tom’s fortunes—and, for that matter, on the fortunes of the Amesville High School Baseball Team—than either of the boys could have imagined in their wildest dreams. They happened to have the lot to themselves that evening, none of the other fellows having shown up, and Sidney had been thudding the ball against Tom’s glove for some time. After every delivery Tom would return the ball at an overhand toss, as Sidney had instructed him to do. Presently, however, after a wild pitch had escaped him and he had had to chase back of the fence for it, he called to Sidney:

“Sid, here you go. Watch my curve!”

Twisting his fingers around the ball as he had seen Sidney do times innumerable, he shot the ball away. He had no more expected the ball to really curve than he had expected it to take wings and go over the house-tops. But it did curve, most palpably! Moreover, it settled into Sidney’s outstretched bare hands with such speed that Sidney, not prepared, promptly dropped it and shook a stinging palm.

“Where’d you get on to that?” he inquired in surprise. “That was a peach of an out! Here, give me another.” And Sidney trotted to the fence. “Toss me your mitt.”

Pleasurably surprised, Tom walked down to the trampled spot where Sidney had stood and tried again. He tried many more times, in fact, and all to no purpose. The ball went swiftly enough, but it went perfectly straight, and all Tom’s efforts to make it repeat its former erratic flight were in vain.

“That’s funny, isn’t it?” he asked breathlessly at last. “It curved before all right. You saw it, didn’t you? Why doesn’t it do it now, Sid?”

“Oh, you probably don’t hold it the same way. Try again.”

Tom tried until he was out of breath and every muscle in his arm ached, and all to no purpose except to amuse Sidney.

By that time it was too dark to see well and he gave it up for the time. When Sidney joined him he was frowning accusingly at the ball.

“I’ll make you do it again,” muttered Tom, “if I have to keep at it all summer. You just see if I don’t!”