Page:Baseball Joe on the School Nine.djvu/28

 hoarsely. "Leg it, Joe. Peaches will take care of him."

"But the hat—I damaged it—I want to pay for it," objected our hero, who was square in everything.

"Don't worry about that. When Old Sixteen gets to spouting Latin or Greek he doesn't know whether he's on his head or his feet, and as for a hat—say, forget it and come on. He'll never mention it again. Peaches knows how to handle him. Peaches is the best Latin lad in the whole school, and once Sixteen finds some one who will listen to his new theory about conjugating irregular verbs, he'll talk until midnight. Come on!"

"Poor Peaches!" murmured Tom Davis.

"Never mind, Sister," spoke George Bland, as he linked his arm in that of Joe, "Peaches seen his duty and he done it nobly, as the novels say. When Sixteen gets through with him we'll blow him to a feed to make it up to him. Come on while the going's good. He'll never see us."

Thus the day—rather an eventful one as it was destined to become—came to an end. The boys filed into the big dining hall, and talk, which had begun to verge around to baseball, could scarcely be heard for the clatter of knives and forks and dishes.