Page:Baseball Joe on the School Nine.djvu/16

 could do was once. Besides, Joe poked it in the exact centre once, and nearly twice."

"That's easy," spoke the newcomer, with a sneer in his voice.

"Let's see you do it. Shell," invited George Bland.

"Go on, Hiram, show 'em what you can do," urged Luke Fodick, who was a sort of toady to Hiram Shell, the school bully, if ever there was one.

"Just watch me," requested Hiram, and hastily taking some hard round snowballs away from a smaller lad who had made them for his own use, the bully threw.

I must do him the credit to say that he was a good shot, and all three of his missiles hit the barrel head. But two of them clipped the outer edge, and only one was completely on, and that nowhere near the centre.

"Joe Matson's got you beat a mile!" exclaimed Peaches.

"That's all right," answered Hiram with the easy superior air he generally assumed. "If I'd been practicing all day as you fellows have I could poke the centre every time, too."

As a matter of fact, those three balls were the first Joe had thrown that day, but he did not think