“But I can’t pitch much, anyway!” Tom would declare, at last a bit impatient. “You seem to think I’m a wonder, but, shucks, I wouldn’t last two innings against Petersburg! All I’ve got is an out-shoot and a straight ball!” “Yes, a straight ball that goes about ninety miles an hour and crosses the plate so fast you can’t see it until ten minutes after! And you’re learning the drop, too! Of course, I don’t claim that you’re as good as Thorny Brooks yet, but I do say that if you came out and let Bat Talbot get hold of you you’d be a peach by the middle of the season. And I think it’s a shame you can’t!” And Tom thought so, too, although he didn’t say it! CHAPTER XV THE PUMP CHANGES HANDS In April, after the roads dried off, Tom engaged one of Malloy’s trucks to bring the pump in from the farm. It cost him ten dollars and he sometimes doubted the wisdom of it. Uncle Israel remitted the storage charge when confronted with the money. “Guess,” he said, “as Cummings knocked off four dollars and a half to you, Tom, we won’t say anything about storage. I guess you’re a fool, though, to pay those men ten dollars to lug that thing to town, because you’ll never sell it for more’n that.” Tom rather doubted it himself, but he went through with it and in due time the pump, a rather cumbersome and very heavy affair, was deposited in the basement of the hardware store. It was Mr. Cummings who advised the expenditure of further money in the shape of an advertisement in a morning paper and who helped write it. “I guess,” he said, “we won’t put any price on it. We’ll just say, ‘Cheap for cash.’ If anyone comes to look at it, you leave him to me.” Tom was very glad to, for he greatly doubted his ability to conduct advantageous bargaining. The advertisement ran three mornings a week for over a month and cost Tom five dollars and twenty cents and brought no returns. Nor did a card displayed at the back of the store, setting forth in Tom’s best lettering the fact that a rare bargain awaited some lucky purchaser, do any better. Tom had almost forgotten the existence of the pump when, one morning in April, he stopped on Main Street to watch the excavating for a new office building. The contractors had struck water at a depth of some eighteen feet below the street level and the workmen were wading and splashing about in a good twelve inches of it. They had one pump at work, but it was quite evident to the spectators that fringed the railing that the pump was making little if any headway. A middle-aged man with a perplexed expression emerged from the temporary office and, accompanied by a subordinate, watched the work for a moment. As the two men were within a few feet of Tom, he could not help overhearing what was said.