"I'm afraid it's rather bad news in a way," said Joe. "I've just got a letter from McRae in which he tells me that he's completed all arrangements for a baseball tour around the world. You know, Mabel, that I spoke to you about it just before we left New York. But it was only a vague idea then and something of the kind is talked about at the end of every baseball season. Usually though, it only ends in talk, and the teams make a barnstorming trip to San Francisco or to Cuba. But this time it seems to have gone through all right. And now Mac is calling upon Jim and me to go along." "My word!" broke in Reggie, "anyone would think it was a bally funeral to hear you talk and see your face. I should think you'd be no-end pleased to have a chance to go." To tell the truth, neither Joe nor Jim seemed elated at the prospect. Joe's eyes sought Mabel, while Jim's rested on Clara, and neither one of those young ladies was so obtuse as not to know what the young men were thinking. "When do you have to go?" asked Clara, soberly. "We have to be in Chicago by the nineteenth," answered Joe, "and we'll have to leave here the day before. To-day's the sixteenth and you can see for yourself how much time that gives us to stay in Riverside." "No rest for the wicked," said Reggie, jocularly. "'Pon honor, you boys have earned a rest after the work you did against the Red Sox." Clara was very far from her vivacious self as she thought of the coming separation, but Joe was surprised and the least bit hurt to see how lightly Mabel seemed to regard it. "It's too bad, of course," she said, cheerfully, "but we'll have to make the best of these two days at least. It's a pity, though, that it wasn't November nineteenth instead of October." "We could have started a bit later if it were only for the foreign trip," explained Jim, "but we're going to play a series of exhibition games between here and the Coast, and we've got to take advantage of what good weather there is left. If we can only get to the Rockies before it's too cold to play, we'll be all right, because in California they're able to play all the year round." "My word!" exclaimed Reggie, "I don't see why they don't cut out the exhibition games altogether. I should think this country had had baseball enough for one season." "Not when the Giants and an All-American team are the players," replied Joe. "The people will come out in crowds--they'll fairly beg us to take their money." "And it will be worth taking," chimed in Jim. "Do you know how much money the teams took in before they reached the coast on their last World's Trip? Ninety-seven thousand dollars. Count them, ladies and gentlemen--ninety-seven thousand dollars in good American dollars!" he added grandly. "That sounds like a lot of money," said Reggie, thoughtfully.