The Blues on the bench shouted and cavorted, and Thorny hustled over to third to coach, and Tommy, back of first, pawed the earth and made as much noise as a steam whistle! Walter White was up and the Lynton pitcher for once looked a little dismayed and nervous. Buster caused all sorts of trouble on first and the pitcher wasted much energy trying to catch him napping. But Buster, although he took daring leads, somehow always managed to scurry back to safety before the ball slapped into first baseman’s hands. And all the time Tommy, leaping and waving his arms, shouted a rigmarole of ridiculous advice which no sensible base runner would ever have heeded and which Buster payed no attention to. “That’s the boy!” shouted Tommy. “Down with his arm! Up with his foot! Slide! Slide! _Whee-ee!_ Safe on second! Look out! Whoa, Bill! Now you’re off! Run, you rabbit! Whoa! Never touched him! Twenty minutes, Mr. Umpire! There he goes! Watch him, watch him! Hi! hi! hi! hi! Take a lead, Buster, take a lead! He can’t throw this far! All right! Up again! How was that for a balk, Mr. Umpire? All right, Buster, he didn’t see it. Off you go. That’s good! Hold it! On your toes, boy, on your toes! Now you’re off!” And meanwhile Thorny, behind third, was adding his voice to the uproar and the Lynton pitcher, finally giving up Buster as a bad job, directed his attention to the batsman and sent in three balls, one after another! Then a strike was called and then there was another ball and Walter trotted to first and Buster cavorted to second. It was Tom’s turn again. As thus far he had failed to connect with the ball, and as he was a pitcher and therefore supposed to be a weak batsman, the Lynton battery made the mistake of trying to put him out of the way expeditiously with straight balls. Tom let two strikes get by him before he realised that he was being offered perfectly good balls with little or nothing on them. Then he took a good deep breath into his lungs, gripped his bat more firmly, and swung at the next delivery. Bat and ball met squarely and pandemonium reigned while Buster tore around from second and Walter made for third. For the ball, arching gently, was on its way into centre field, quite safe from either left fielder or centre fielder. It was the latter who got it finally on the bound and hurled it back to second base. But by that time Buster had scored, Walter was on third, and Tom was doubling back to first base and safety.