his superiors down upon him. A natural born practical joker, his jokes nearly always ended in his being fired again. And at all times his real interest was in America's national game of baseball.
In winter Speedy devoured the news of the baseball deals and the league meetings. In the spring his mind was with the players in the training camps. In summer he followed the major league races keenly day by day and attended the games by hook or crook whenever he possibly could. In the fall he was all agog over the World's Series. He played ball himself in De Lacey Street and his only regret in not going on with his schooling was that he was thus denied a possible chance to pursue his love for the game on a regular diamond with real grass and everything.
Pop and Jane were both very fond of the boy. They were also worried about him. At the time of our story he was twenty-two. Jane was eighteen but felt much older than that, exercising as she did a maternal care over two men. It was time, Jane and her grandfather agreed, that Harold should settle down. Speedy had many times agreed with them. His good looks and good nature won him jobs easily, many of them quite good jobs. But his obsession for baseball, his practical jokes and his restlessness lost them for him.
Lately he had given up occupying the spare room with the Dillons, reluctantly but firmly, because he had argued that they could rent it out to somebody for a much larger sum than he could pay. He knew they needed the money. He did not want to burden
