It was a tall and red-faced young man who brought this message to the Catalpa Nine, as they were gathered in the room of Captain Hiram Porter, in their lodging-house, after the great match game. Al Heaton had hurried to join the boys, as soon as he had sent to Catalpa his despatch announcing the result of the contest in the most glowing terms consistent with the rate of telegraph tolls and the needed conciseness of a despatch. All hands were in that flow of animal spirits that might have been expected from nearly a dozen young fellows who are elated over a great victory and who have laboriously repressed their jubilation until they are alone.
“There! I told you, boys, that your skylarking would bring up the landlord. Oh, I say, Neddie, quit your fooling. You can’t throw ‘The Lily,’ if you try all night; and we are making such a racket that the whole house is disturbed.” This was Captain Porter’s admonition.
“Besides,” said Larry Boyne, who was panting with the unwonted exertion of boosting Charlie King over the headboard of the bedstead, where Charlie was determined he would not go, “besides all that, it’s time for you and me, Hi, to get ready to go out to dinner.”
“Where are you two fellows going to dinner?” demanded half a dozen voices at once. “Are you going to throw off on us in that way?”
Captain Hiram explained that he and Larry had accepted an invitation to take dinner with Judge Morris, with whose family Mr. Heaton and Albert were staying during the progress of the games in Chicago. The Morrises, he added, lived on the north side of the river, and he and Larry should be ready to start, instead of “cutting up” to show how tickled they were with their recent victory.
“But ’twas a famous victory,” quoted Larry, “for all that, and I would just as soon stay with the boys and celebrate it as go out to dine with Judge Morris, who, they say, is a heavy swell.”
“I happen to know that Miss Alice Howell and her friend Miss Ida are stopping with the Morrises, Larry,” said Ben Burton, with an unpleasant leer, “and you and Hiram will be in clover; so you can afford to shake us until the next game.”
Larry grew very red in the face at this, and there was a dangerous gleam in Hiram Porter’s eye as he noted the ill-natured scowl on Burton’s countenance. He restrained himself, however, and said, “Why do you continually harp on the Judge’s daughter, Ben? The young lady is from our own town, and she is more interested in the success of the Catalpas than some of its members, I reckon; at least, I think so, judging from appearances.”
“What do you mean by that, Hi Porter?” demanded Ben, hotly. “You have insinuated that sort of thing too many times in my hearing. And I want you to understand that you can’t put on any captain’s airs over me, now that we are off the field. I am my own master for tonight anyway.”
“Come, come, boys,” interposed Larry, soothingly. “Don’t let us mar the enjoyment of this evening by lugging in any old quarrels or little differences. We shall all have to pull together tomorrow, if we are to beat the Calumets. They are going to give us a stiff brush, and you may depend on that. Come, Hiram, let’s be off.”
Burton said something, sullenly and indistinctly, about the certainty of the defeat of the Catalpas, tomorrow, which caught the ear of “The Lily,” who, still puffing with the effects of his tussle with Neddie Ellis, was regarding the malcontent Ben with an expression of wonder on his good-natured face. He slowly dropped out a few words of comment, in his usual fashion, upon Burton’s unfriendly attitude and then added:
“I say, I wonder why you don’t give up playing baseball, since you find so little fun in it. ’Pears to me you are all the time out ’o sorts-like. You don’t enjoy good health, Ben, and that’s what is the matter along of you. Now, why do you think that the Calumets are going to get away with us, tomorrow?”
But before Ben could form a reply and cover the confusion that crept over his face, Neddie Ellis, who was the universal favorite of the club, broke in with, “Oh, I say, boys, do you know what these Chicago people call us? why they call us ‘The Cats.’ That’s short for Catalpas, I suppose. We ought to call the Calumets ‘The Cads,’ and I guess that would be getting even.”
Under cover of the laugh which this sally raised, Hiram, Larry, and young Heaton departed to fulfil their engagement on the north side, Ben Burton looking after them with a darkened countenance.
“Ben is angry because he is not invited to Judge Morris’s,” said Larry, as the three young fellows stepped lightly off in search of a street car. “He has a jealous temper, and the least thing that looks like a slight sets him off.”
“Well,” said Albert, “Alice said that the Judge would have liked to have invited the whole nine, if he had had room to entertain them properly; but he hadn’t, and so he invited only those with whom the governor was most acquainted.”
“To say nothing of Miss Alice?” added Hiram, slyly.
Albert admitted that Miss Alice’s wishes were consulted in the matter, and that it was only natural that she, being a visitor, should indicate her preferences in the matter.
“What does it signify, anyhow?” said Larry, a little impatiently. “It seems to me that Ben Burton is ready to fly out at the least provocation. I almost wish we had never thought of going over to Judge Morris’s. I am sure I have tried my level best to keep the peace with Ben, but he seems to grow more and more cantankerous every day. To think of raising a breeze over such
