"Ah-ha!" cried Sile Crane, bringing forth and flourishing a long, burnt, battered bat. "Here's Old Buster, the sack cleaner. Haowdy do, my friend? I'm sartainly glad to shake ye again." "Up to date," said Cooper, tying his shoes, "I've never seen you do any great shakes with Old Buster." "Oh, ain't ye?" snapped Sile resentfully. "Mebbe yeou've forgot that three-sacker I got with this club in the Clearport game." "Um-mum," mumbled Chipper. "Now you mention it, I do have a faint recollection of that marvelous accident. You were trying to dodge the ball, weren't you, Sile? You just shut your blinkers and ducked, and Pitkins' inshoot carromed off the bat over into right field and got lost in the grass. If we all hadn't yelled for you to run, you'd be standing there now, wondering what had happened." "Yeou're another," flung back Crane. "I made a clean three-sacker, and yeou know it." "Well, anyhow, you got anchored on third and failed to come home when I bunted on a signal for the squeeze. The Clearporters had barrels of fun with you over that. I remember Barney Carney asking you if you'd brought your bed." "Oh, rats!" rasped Crane, striding toward the open gym door and carrying his pet bat. "Some parts of your memory ought to be amputated." "What a cutting thing to say!" grinned Cooper, rising to follow. The field, surrounded by a high board fence, was located near the gymnasium, and in a few minutes all the boys were on it and ready for business. Announcing that they would begin with a little plain fielding practice, Eliot assigned them to their positions. "Do you care to go into right, Roy?" he asked, turning to Hooker as the last one. "Not I," was the instant answer. "That's not my position. I'm no outfielder. Right field, indeed!" "Oh, very well," said Roger. "Tuttle, go ahead out." "Sure," said Chub agreeably, waddling promptly away to fill the position assigned him. "Springer will bat to the outfield and Grant to the in," directed the captain. "After we warm up a little, we'll try some regular batting and base running, using the old system of signals." Hooker, who had a ball of his own, turned away, and found Fred Sage, whose sole interest in the line of sports lay in football, and who, therefore, had taken no part in baseball after making a decided failure on one occasion when, the team being short, he had allowed himself to be coaxed into a uniform. "There's an extra mitt on the bench, Fred," said Roy. "If you'll catch me, I'll work a few kinks out of my arm." "Can't you find somebody else?" asked Sage reluctantly. "I came out to look on." "Oh, come ahead," urged Hooker. "Get your blood to circulating. Who would ever think you were the quarter back of the great Oakdale eleven? Here's the mitt, take it." "Come over by the fence," requested Fred. "I'll let that do most of the backstopping."