“That’s what I’m tellin’ you,” I says. “The deal looks like you was tryin’ to help us out.”
“We are,” says Dode. “Didn’t we just get through helpin’ you out o’ the first division?”
“Save that for the minstrels,” I says. “Give me the inside on this business: Is they somethin’ the matter with him? The trade’s made now already and it won’t hurt you none to come clean. Didn’t him and Pat get along?”
“Sure! Why not?” says Dode. “Did you ever see a guy that Pat couldn’t get along with him?”
“Well then,” says I, “what’s the answer? Don’t keep me in suspenders.”
“I ain’t sure myself,” says Dode, “but I and Bobby was talkin’ it over and we figured that Pat just plain got sick o’ hearin’ him talk.”
“Feed that to the goldfish,” I says. “If Pat couldn’t stand conversation he wouldn’t of never lasted this long.”
“Conversation, yes,” Dode says; “but it’s a different thing when a bird makes an argument out of everything that’s said. They wasn’t a day passed but what Hawley just as good as called everybody on the club a liar. And it didn’t make no difference whether you was talkin’ to him or not. If I happened to be tellin’ you that my sister was the champion chess player o’ Peanut County, he’d horn right in and say she wasn’t no such a thing; that So-and-So was the champion. And they wouldn’t be no use to argue with him because you couldn’t even get a draw. He’d say he was born in the county seat o’ Peanut County and empired all the chess tournaments there. They wasn’t no subject that he didn’t know all about it better’n anybody else. They wasn’t no town he wasn’t born and brought up in. His mother or his old man is first cousins to everybody in the United States. He’s been operated on for every disease in the hospital. And if he’s did all he says he’s did he’ll be eight hundred and twenty-two years old next Halloween.”
“They’s lots o’ fellas like that,” I says.
“You think so?” says Dode. “You wait a wile. Next time I see you, if you don’t say he’s all alone in the Argue League I’ll give you my bat.”
“If he’s that good,” I says, “he’ll be soup for Carey.”
“He will at first, maybe,” says Dode; “but Carey’ll get sick of him, just like Pat and all the rest of us did.”
II
I didn’t lose no time tellin’ Carey about Dode’s dope, and Carey didn’t lose no time tryin’ it out. It was the second day after Hawley joined us. It looked like rain, as usual, and we was stallin’ in the clubhouse, thinkin’ they’d maybe call it off before we had to dress.
“I see in some paper,” says Carey, “where the heavy artillery fire over in Europe is what makes all this duck weather.”
He didn’t get no rise; so he wound up again.
“It seems like it must be somethin’ that does it because they wasn’t never no summer like this before,” he says.
“What do you mean—no summer like this?” says Hawley.
“No summer with so much rain as they’s been this summer,” Carey says.
“Where do you get that stuff?” says Hawley. “This here summer’s been dry, you might say.”
“Yes,” says Carey; “and you might say the Federals done well in Newark.”
“I mean,” says Hawley, “that this here summer’s been dry compared to other summers.”
“I s’pose,” says Carey, “they wasn’t never such a dry summer?”
“They’s been lots of ’em,” Hawley says.
“They’s been lots o’ summers that was drier and they’s been lots o’ summers when they was more rain.”
“Not in the last twenty years,” says Carey.
“Yes, in the last twenty years too,” says Hawley. “Nineteen years ago this summer made this here one look like a drought. It come up a storm the first day o’ May and they wasn’t a day from then till the first o’ September when it didn’t rain one time or another.”
“You got some memory,” says Carey—“goin’ back nineteen years.”
“I guess I ought to remember it,” says Hawley. “That was the first year my old man left me go to the ball games alone, and they wasn’t no games in our town from April till Labor Day. They wasn’t no games nowheres because the railroads was all washed out. We lived in Cleveland and my old man was caught in New York when the first o’ the floods come and couldn’t get back home for three months.”
“Couldn’t he hire a canoe nowheres?” says Carey.
“Him and some others was thinkin’ about tryin’ the trip on a raft,” says Hawley, “but my old lady was scared to have him try it; so she wrote and told him to stay where he was.”
“She was lucky to have a carrier pigeon to take him the letter,” says Carey. “Or did you swim East with it?”
“Swim!” Hawley says. “Say, you wouldn’t talk about swim if you’d saw the current in them floods!”
“I’m sorry I missed it,” says Carey. “I was still over in Portugal yet that year.”
“It dried up in time for the world serious,” says Hawley.
“The world serious between who?” ast Carey.
“The clubs that won out in the two leagues,” says Hawley.
“I didn’t know they was two leagues in ’96,” says Carey. “Who did they give the pennants to—the clubs that was ahead when it begin to sprinkle?”
“Sprinkle!” says Hawley. “Say, you’d of called it a sprinkle if you’d saw it. Sprinkle! Say, I guess that was some sprinkle!”
“I guess it must of been some sprinkle!” says Carey. “It must of made this summer look like a sucker.”
“No,” says Hawley; “this summer’s been pretty bad.”
“But nowheres near like nineteen year ago,” says Carey.
“Oh, I guess they’s about the same rainfall every year,” Hawley says. “But, still and all, we’ve had some mighty wet weather since the first o’ May this year, and I wouldn’t be su’prised if the heavy artillery fire in Europe had somethin’ to do with it.”
“That’s
