Page:Baseball Joe on the School Nine.djvu/78

 CHAPTER VIII

"WHO WILL PITCH?"

a moment there was silence—a sort of awed silence—and Teeter uttered a faint cheer.

"That's the way to talk!" he exclaimed.

"You're all right!" declared Peaches.

Luke turned and glared at them. Afterward several lads said the bully's toady looked dazed, as if he did not understand what had happened.

"He'll go tell Hiram now, and he'll be laying for you, Joe," was Tom's opinion.

"Let him. I'm ready to meet that bully whenever he is, and I'm not afraid, either."

"That's the way to talk!" exclaimed Teeter admiringly. "If Hiram got one good licking he wouldn't be quite so uppish. But I'm afraid this will put you on the fritz for the nine, Joe."

"I don't care if it does. I'm going to let 'em know what I think."

Yet in the quietness of his room that night Joe rather regretted what he had done. He realized 68