“Yes, I believe it figures out something like that,” laughed the other. “But, mind you, I’m not saying you could get that. Probably you couldn’t get anything yet. You’re a year or two too young. If I were you, and thought seriously of playing professional ball, I’d get on some amateur team this year and play with them for the practice.”

“What’s the difference, please, between an amateur team and a professional?”

“Money. On an amateur team you play for the love of playing and nothing else. On a professional team you play for the love of playing plus a fat salary.”

“I see,” murmured Wayne. “But could I—I mean would you——”

“Sure, if I needed the money,” was the answer. “I wouldn’t be a professional ball player and expect to stick at it all my life. You can’t do it. The pace is too hard. But if I had the ability and could command a good salary for playing ball I’d do it, and keep my eyes open for something better. I know a chap who played professional ball for six years and studied law in the winter and whenever he got a chance. Then he went into an office two winters. After that he quit baseball and now he’s doing well over in Trenton. Lots of folks think professional baseball is like highway robbery or something. They class professional ball players and prize fighters and thugs all together. I guess there was a time when some ball players were a roughish lot, but that’s gone by. Most of them are just like the rest of us nowadays. A lot of them lead cleaner lives than the folks who knock them. They have to, for one thing. Anyway, they do it. You can be a professional ball player now and be a gentleman, too. Most of them are. A great many are college fellows; practically all are educated. They don’t expect to make a life’s work of it, you see. They’ve got the gift of playing good ball and they turn it into money, just the same as a man who has the gift of teaching Greek turns it into money. It’s just a business proposition. Where your ball player has it on some of the rest of us is just here: he likes his work and we don’t!”

Pattern knocked the ashes from his pipe against the edge of the platform and yawned. “I’ve got to get back,” he announced. “It’s nearly one. Think over what I said about joining an amateur team and getting practice, my boy. That’s your best move.” He nodded, smiled, and hurried away, leaving Wayne, for some reason, rather excited.

He had never considered playing baseball for a living, had never taken his ability seriously. He had known since he was fourteen that he could field and throw and bat far better than his playmates, but he had accepted the fact without concern. They had made him captain of his school team in his last year and he had led them through a season of almost uninterrupted victories. And that summer he had played twice a week with the “White Sox,” a local aggregation formed by the young men and older boys in Sleepersville, holding down third base with phenomenal success and winning renown with his bat. But never until today had it occurred to him that he might perhaps earn money in such a simple way as playing a game he loved. It didn’t sound sensible, he thought. Why, he would be glad to play baseball for his board and lodging alone! Glad to do it for nothing if he could afford to! To receive thirty-five dollars a week, or even twenty, for doing it sounded absurd. But, of course, fellows did get paid for it, and—and—well, it was something to think over!

He thought it over a good deal during the succeeding days. He had another talk with Pattern, waylaying him one evening on his return from the coal office. He had, he said, decided to follow the other’s advice about joining an amateur team, but he didn’t know how to do it, didn’t know where there was such a team.

“There’s one here in Medfield,” replied Pattern. “Two, in fact. The Athletics have a pretty fair bunch, but I don’t believe they’d take you on. They’re rather a silk-stocking lot. The other team is the Chenango. Younger fellows mostly: the Y. M. C. A. bunch. By the way, you don’t belong to the Y. M. C. A., do you? Why don’t you join? It won’t cost you much of anything and will do you a lot of good all around. You’ll meet fellows, for one thing. I’ll get you an application, Sloan. It’s something you ought to do, my boy.”

“I’d like to very much,” said Wayne. “But I’m afraid I wouldn’t have much time for playing ball. You see, I have to work until five every day.”

“Most of the others do, too, I guess. They usually hold practice after that time. You’ll have your Saturday afternoons to yourself after the middle of June, and they only play on Saturdays. You join the Association, Sloan, and I’ll make you acquainted with some of the chaps there. You’ll find them a nice lot. And I guess you won’t have much trouble getting a chance to play.”

Pattern—his full name was Arthur Pattern, as Wayne eventually learned—was as good as his word and four days later Wayne was a member of the Medfield Young Men’s Christian Association and had increased his list of acquaintances about two hundred per cent. The Association had a comfortable building in the new business district, with a well-equipped gymnasium, a small auditorium, reading, lounging, and game rooms, and a few bedrooms at the top of the building, one of which Arthur Pattern occupied. Pattern, Wayne learned, was not a native of Medfield, but had come there a year before from a small town in New Hampshire, where his folks still resided. Pattern preferred his room at the Y. M. C. A. to similar accommodation at a boarding-house. It was in Pattern’s little room that Wayne made a clean breast of his adventures for the past three months. His host, who had vouched for him to the Association without knowing any more about him than had been revealed to him in their few meetings in the freight yard, had asked no questions, but Wayne thought he owed some account of himself to his new friend. Pattern listened interestedly, and when Wayne had ended shook his head slowly.

“It’s none of my business, Sloan,” he said, “and I don’t know what you were up against back home, but this thing of running away is usually a pretty poor business. However, that’s done now. One thing I would do if I were you, though, is write back and tell your stepfather where you are and how you are. I guess you owe him that much. Will you do that?”

Wayne consented doubtfully. “I wouldn’t want him to come after me, though, and fetch me home with him,” he said.

“I dare say he could do that, but I don’t believe he would. From what you’ve told me of him—or, maybe, from what you haven’t told me—I gather that he might be rather relieved to be rid of the expense of clothing and feeding you, Sloan. Anything in that?”

“A heap, I reckon. I don’t mind his knowing where I am as long as he doesn’t make trouble.”

“I don’t see what trouble he could make,” objected Pattern. “Anyway, you’d feel better for writing. I’d tell him why I left, that I was well and getting on and that I meant to make my own way.”

“June wrote to his mother a little while after we got here, so I reckon Mr. Higgins knows I’m still alive. June didn’t tell where we were, though.”

“Where did he mail his letter?” asked the other. “Here in Medfield?”

“Yes.”

“Then it seems to me he may have a suspicion,” laughed Pattern.

“I never thought of that!” exclaimed Wayne, joining the laughter. “I reckon if he’d wanted me back he’d been after me before this, then. I’ll write tonight, before I go home.”

“I would. What about this boy that’s with you? Why doesn’t he join here, too?”

“June? Why, he—he’s coloured!”

“So you said. What’s that got to do with it? Isn’t he a clean, decent boy?”

“Why, yes, but—I thought——”

“We don’t draw the colour line up here, Sloan. We’ve got more than a dozen coloured fellows in the Association right now. Some of them are mighty well liked, too. You’d better get your friend to come in. It’ll be good for him and good for us. We’re trying to get all the new members we can. See if you can’t persuade him.”

“Oh, he will join if I tell him to,” responded Wayne carelessly. “But it seems—sort of funny——”

“Yes, but you’re not down in Dixie now, my boy. Remember that.”

For once, however, Wayne’s authority failed him. June firmly and respectfully declined to have anything to do with the Y. M. C. A. “Maybe it’s jus’ like you-all say, Mas’ Wayne, but I ain’ fixin’ to act like these yere Northern darkies, no, sir! I done watch ’em. They acts like they thought they was quality, Mas’ Wayne, dressin’ themselves up in store clothes an’ buttin’ white folks right off’n the sidewalk! If they was down in Colquitt County someone’d hit ’em over the head with a axe!”

“But this isn’t Colquitt County, June. This is up North, and things are different here. Up here a coloured man is as good as a white man—at least they think he is.”

“No, sir, Mas’ Wayne, they don’ think that, sir. They jus’ perten’ they thinks it. Don’ no white man sit down to a table with a nigger, does they? They lets you ride in the same car with the white folks, but you can’ go to white folkses hotel. It’s mighty mixed up, Mas’ Wayne, an’ you don’ know where you is!”

“But there are a lot of coloured fellows in the Y. M. C. A., June. Doesn’t that show that it’s all right for you to join it?”

“Shows it’s all right for them, Mas’ Wayne, but it don’ prove nothin’ to me! I jus’ wouldn’ care for it. White folks is white folks an’ niggers is niggers, an’ there ain’ no gettin’ aroun’ it, Mas’ Wayne. No, sir, don’ you ask me to join no ’Sociation, Mas’ Wayne.”

Secretly, Wayne was a little relieved at June’s decision, for he held the same views on the subject. He and June had been playmates when they were tiny, companions later, and friends always, but he had been brought up in the firm conviction that the negro was an inferior race. Whether he was right or wrong I don’t pretend to know.

At all events, June remained firm. By this time he was flourishing exceedingly. His deposit had been paid and he was now getting three dollars every Monday from the proprietor of the hotel and earning an average of twice that amount in tips, all of which, it may be truthfully stated, he did his honest best to deserve. He was easily the most popular of the four bell boys employed at the hotel, and, since envy and malice are not confined to those with white skins, he had had his troubles. The head bell boy who, prior to June’s advent, had ruled the roost with a high hand, levying toll on the earnings of the other and younger boys, had not yielded his rule without a struggle. But he had run up against a Tartar in June, for the latter refused to either acknowledge the other’s right of dominion or give up any of his earnings to him. The eventual result was a decisive battle with fists in the furnace-room, a bout in which June, in spite of smaller size and weight, conclusively proved his superiority. The head bell boy retired from public life for the space of one whole day, and, when he returned, brought back with him a meek and respectful demeanour. June didn’t deceive himself into thinking that the other was any fonder of him for the beating he had received, but he was quite sure that thereafter he would be let alone.

Meanwhile Wayne learned a little better every day how to make himself useful to Jim Mason and every day grew to find more interest in his work. He became a great favourite with the men around the freight yard, while Jim never missed an opportunity to do him any kindness in his power. Frequently Wayne was invited to the house with the sun-parlor for supper or Sunday dinner, and less frequently he accepted the invitation and went. He was always certain of good, well-cooked food which, if plain, was abundant. Mrs. Mason had long since learned of Wayne’s rescue of Terry and could never do enough for him. Terry, too, welcomed the visitor, evincing an almost embarrassing enthusiasm for his society. Wayne was duly introduced to the wonderful hen—whose name, strangely enough, proved to be Teddie—and to her even more wonderful brood of chickens, four in number.

In consequence of new friends and new interests, Wayne naturally spent less time at “Carhurst” and saw less of June. But June, too, had found friends amongst his own race and was not lonesome. In fact, he confided to Wayne one evening after supper, while the latter was anxiously examining the growth of his plants and watering them from the dish pan, that he “liked this yere place right smart,” adding that he “reckoned it wasn’t never intended they should go to New York.” June had blossomed forth in new clothes which, while extremely inexpensive, made him look quite fine. Wayne tried to tease him by saying that he was just like a Northern nigger now, but June didn’t mind. “’Tain’ your clothes, Mas’ Wayne, that makes you ’spectable,” he said. “It’s the way you acts!”

Wayne, too, had provided himself with new attire. It was Arthur Pattern who tactfully hinted at the advisability of enlarging his wardrobe, something that Wayne had had in mind for a fortnight and had been deterred from doing only by the realisation of the tremendous hole the outlay would make in his savings. When he did emerge from the clothing store carrying a neat blue serge suit in a big pasteboard box he was as near penniless as one could be and have a jingle left in his pocket! But the expenditure paid for itself if only in the comfortable feeling of being decently dressed when Wayne went to the Y. M. C. A. of an afternoon, as had become his custom. Usually Arthur Pattern stopped for him on his way past the freight house and they walked uptown together. Wayne saw his circle of acquaintances grow from day to day, thanks to Arthur, and it wasn’t long before he could truthfully echo June’s sentiments and say that he “liked this yere place right smart.” And finally, as May was drawing to its end, he secured what he had hoped for from the first, an invitation to join the Chenango Base-Ball Club squad and show what he could do.