“Now, that’s news to me, Hugh!” exclaimed the delighted Thad; “queer that I hadn’t heard a word about it before.  But then you get wind of everything that’s going on.  Folks think they ought to ask your advice on all sorts of subjects.  That’s what it means to be the most popular boy in a town.”

Hugh laughed.

“Thanks for the compliment, Thad,” he said; “but just think of the weight of responsibility I have to stagger under, even as the captain of the Scranton Seven.  Why, everybody stops me on the street, and asks the most remarkable questions.  They seem to think I’m gifted with prophetic vision.  They ask me to tell them just how badly we’re going to whip Keyport to-morrow morning, and lots of other things that I know no more about than a baby might.”

“Well, have you decided to give up trying to learn where the woman with the little child came from?” asked Thad, again switching the subject in an abrupt fashion he had.

“Oh!  I don’t know whether it will pay me to go out again, and try to trace her back to Belleville, or some such place,” said Hugh.  “Doctor Cadmus assured my mother she would certainly be in her rational mind inside of two days at the longest.  So I reckon I had better lie on my oars, and wait.  I’ve got plenty to bother about, as it is, with that hot game coming off in the morning.”

“Perhaps you’re wise about that, Hugh.  I know I’m a lot too impatient by half, and can’t bear to wait for things to come to me.  That’s why I always stepped out to meet the ball when at bat; and I often caught it before the break came to make it a sharp drop.”

“Mother says she thinks her full name is Judith Walters, though, as far as we know now, that doesn’t help any.  Still, if she didn’t recover, it might assist in finding her family, so they could take the boy.  He’s a fine little chap, and I’ve already made great friends with him.”

“You say she keeps on speaking to someone she calls grandfather, who seems likely to turn them both out of the house?” Thad persisted, as though he might be trying to figure something out.

“Yes, and so we take it for granted there must be some sort of a pitiful family tragedy about the whole affair,” Hugh told him.  “Mother suspects she may have married some years ago against her grandfather’s will; and, losing her husband suddenly through accident, she is now on her way back, to plead with a hard-hearted old man for a place under his roof.  But as you say there’s no family named Walters near here, and we certainly don’t know of any girl leaving her home that way.”

“The chances are,” Thad said decisively, “that she was meaning to pass through Scranton, and was heading for some other town, perhaps Allandale.  You might find out if any such thing happened there some years ago; or if an old man could be found who would welcome a dear little boy named Joey.”

The subject being exhausted for the time being, the boys talked of something else until they finally separated, each heading for his own particular supper table.