"You're dreaming!" scoffed Cheever, bustling up in his inimitable, push-ahead way, and pulling Ralph playfully about. "Resign? Huh! On the last test game-with the pennant almost ours? Gag him!"
"Why," drawled a tone of pathetic alarm, "it would be rank treachery, you know!"
"Hello, are you awake?" jeered Will, turning on the last speaker.
Ralph looked at him too, and through some wayward perversity of his nature his face grew more determined than ever. His eyes flashed quickly, and he regarded the speaker with disfavor, but he kept silence.
"You won't do it, you know!" blundered the newcomer, making his way forward. "It would queer the whole kit. What have we been working for? To get the bulge, and run the circuit. Why, I've just counted on it!"
Grif Farrington, for that was the speaker's name, expressed the intensest sense of personal injury as he spoke.
He was the nephew of Gasper Farrington, although he did not resemble his uncle in any striking particular as to form or feature. Both were of the same genus, however, for the crabbed capitalist was universally designated "a shark" by his neighbors.
Grif was a fat, overgrown fellow, with big saucer eyes and flabby cheeks and chin. "Bullhead" some of the boys had dubbed him. But they often found that what they mistook for stupidity was in reality indolence, and that in any deal where his own selfish concern was involved Grif managed to come out the winner.
As Ralph did not speak, Grif grew even more voluble.
"I say, it would be rank treachery!" he declared. "And a shame to treat a club so. If we lose this game we're ditched for only scrub home games. Win it, and we are the champion visiting club all over the county. That's what we have been working for. Are you going to spoil it? Haven't I put up like a man when the club was behind. See here, Ralph Fairbanks, I'll give you-I'll make it five dollars if you'll keep in for just this afternoon's game."
"Shut up, you chump!" warned Will Cheever, slipping between the boor and Ralph, whose color was rising dangerously fast.
Will pushed aside Grif's pocketbook, linked an arm in that of Ralph, and led him from the building, winking encouragingly to his mates.
He came back to the group in about a quarter of an hour, but alone.
"Fixed it?" inquired half a dozen eager voices.
"Yes, I've fixed it," said Cheever, though none too cordially. "He's going to leave us, fellows, and it's too bad! He'll play the game this afternoon, but that's the last."
"What's up?" put in Grif Farrington, in his usual coarsely inquisitive way.
"You was nearly up-or down!" snapped Cheever tartly. "You nearly spoiled things for us. Money isn't everything, if you have got lots of it, and haven't the sense to know that it's an insult to offer to buy what Ralph Fairbanks would give to his friends for nothing, or not at all!"
When the game was called at two o'clock, Ralph was on hand.
He was the object of more than ordinary interest to his own and the opposition club that afternoon. The word had gone the rounds that he had practically resigned from service, and the fact caused great speculation. His nearest friends detected a certain serious change in him that puzzled them. They knew him well enough to discern that something of unusual weight lay upon his mind.
According to enthusiastic little Tom Travers, Ralph Fairbanks was "just splendid!" that afternoon. Whatever Ralph had on his mind, he did not allow it to interfere with the work on hand.
Ralph was the heaviest batter of the club, and on this particular occasion he conducted himself brilliantly, and the pennant was the property of the Criterions long before the fifth inning was completed. The club was in ecstasies, and Grif Farrington, who had money and time for spending it, wore a grin of placid self-satisfaction on his flat, fat face.
"Whoop!" yelled Will Cheever, as the ninth inning went out in a blaze of baseball glory.
Will posed to give Ralph, bat in hand, a royal "last one." It was Ralph's farewell to the beloved diamond field. He poised the bat and caught the ball with a masterly stroke that had something cannon-like in its execution.
Crack! he sent it flying obliquely, and felt as if with that final stroke he had driven baseball with all its lovely attributes dear out of his life.
Smash! the ball grazed the high brick wall around the old unused factory to the left, struck an upper window, shattered a pane to atoms, and disappeared.
"Lost ball!" jeered little Tom Travers.
No one went after it. The fence surrounding the factory bore two signs that deterred-one was "Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted," and the other announced that it was "For Rent, by the owner, Gasper Farrington."
Ralph made a grimace, and a mental note of later mending the breakage for which he was responsible.
Will Cheever caught him up as he was heading for home.
"See here, Ralph," he remarked, "if you wasn't so abominably close-mouthed-"
"About what?" challenged Ralph, pleasantly serious. "Why, there's no mystery about my resigning. I had to do it."
"Why?"
"I've got to go to work. My mother needs the money, and I'm old enough."
"What you going to work at?" inquired Will, with real interest.
"Railroading, – if I can get it to do."
CHAPTER IV-IKE SLUMP'S DINNER PAIL
Ralph hurried home. His mother had gone temporarily to some neighbors, he judged, for the house was open, and the midday lunch he had purposely avoided was still spread on the table.
He ate with a zest, but in a hurry. His mind was working actively, and he hoped to accomplish results before he had an interview with his mother, and was glad when he got away from the house again without meeting her.
Ralph went down to the depot. He was not in a communicative mood, and did not exchange greetings with many friends there. When the 5.11 train came in there were two packages to deliver. He attended to these promptly, and was back at the express shed just as the agent was closing up for the day.
"All square, Fairbanks?" he inquired, as Ralph handed him the receipt book.
"Yes," nodded Ralph. "They paid me. I want to thank you for all the little jobs you have thrown in my way, Mr. More. It has helped me through wonderfully. You haven't anything permanent you could fit me into, have you?"
"Eh?" ejaculated the agent, with a critical stare at Ralph. "Why, no. Looking for a regular job, Fairbanks?"
"I've got to," answered Ralph.
"Railroading?"
"Any branch of it."
"For steady?"
"Yes, I think it's my line."
"I think so, too," nodded the agent decisively, "You haven't made loaf and play of what little you've done for me. There's no show here, though. I get only forty-five dollars a month, and have to help with the freight at that, but if you are headed for the presidency-"
Ralph smiled.
"Start in the right way, and that is at the bottom of the ladder. You don't want office work?"
"That would take me to general headquarters at Springfield," demurred Ralph, "and I don't want to leave mother alone-just yet."
"I see. There's nothing at the shops down at Acton, where you could go and come home every day, except a trade, and you're not the boy to stop at master mechanic."
"Oh, come now! Mr. More-"
"You can't look too far ahead," declared the agent sapiently. "Dropping jollying, though, we narrow down to real service. There's your Starting point, my boy, plain, sure and simple, and don't you forget it-and don't you miss it!"
He extended his finger down the rails.
"The roundhouse?" said Ralph, following his indication.
"The