“Are you out of sorts?”

“Never felt any better, sir.”

“Being out in the open air all this April afternoon should have given you an appetite.

“I didn’t do anything this afternoon, except sit around in my ball togs,” Fred grumbled.

“I hope you’ll have a few good games to pitch this season,” his father went on.  “You worked hard enough, and I spent money enough on the effort to prepare you.”

“You can’t beat some people’s luck—–­unless you do it with a club,” grumbled Fred, absently.

“Eh?” asked his father, looking up sharply from his plate.  But the boy did not explain.

Late that night, however, breaking training rules for the tenth time, Fred was out on the sly to meet Tip Scammon.  The pair of them laid plans that aimed to stop Dick Prescott’s career as High School pitcher.

CHAPTER XIX

SOME MEAN TRICKS LEFT OVER

Mr. Schimmelpodt had offered that fifty dollars in a moment of undue excitement.

For two or three days afterward he wondered if he couldn’t find some way out of “spending” the money that would yet let him keep his self-respect.

Finding, at last, that he could not, he wrote out the check and mailed it.  He pinned the check to a half-sheet of paper on which he wrote, “Rah mit Prescott!”

A few days later Mr. Schimmelpodt turned from Main Street into the side street on which Dick’s parents kept their store and their home.

“Ach!  Und dere is de door vot that boy lives by,” thought Mr. Schimmelpodt, just before he passed Dick’s door.  “Yen der game over was, und I saw dot boy go down—–­ach!”

For Mr. Schimmelpodt had suited the action to the word.  Out from under him his feet shot.  But Mr. Schimmelpodt, being short and flabby of leg, with a bulky body above, came down as slowly as big bodies are supposed to move.  It was rather a gradual tumble.  Having so much fat on all portions of his body Mr. Schimmelpodt came down with more astonishment than jar.

“Ach!  Such a slipperyishness!” he grunted.  “Hey, Bresgott—–! look out!”

The door had opened suddenly at this early hour in the morning.  Dick, charged with doing a breakfast errand for his mother at the last moment, sprang down the steps and started to sprint away.

At the first step on the sidewalk, however, Dick’s landing foot shot out from under him.

He tried to bring the other down in time to save himself.  That, too, slipped.  Dick waved his arms, wind-mill fashion in the quick effort to save himself.

“Bresgott,” observed the seated contractor, solemnly, “I bet you
five tollars to den cents dot you-----”

Here Schimmelpodt waited until Dick settled the question of the center of gravity by sprawling on the sidewalk.

“—–­Dot you fall,” finished the German, gravely.  “I—–­Und I yin!”