“Deal gently with us, Fudge,” begged Dick humbly. “Remember, we used to be friends. I must be getting along, fellows. Coming over to-morrow, Gordie?” “Yes, I’ll drop around in the morning. We’ve got to get busy and send out some challenges. Who can we get to play with us, Lanny, besides Lesterville and, maybe, Plymouth?” “I don’t know. I think there are plenty of teams, though, if we can find them.” “They have a team at Logan,” said Fudge, “but I guess they’re older than we are.” “What do we care?” asked Gordon. “Logan’s a good way off, though, and I suppose it would cost like the dickens to get there.” “Make them come over here,” suggested Lanny. [Illustration: “‘Good-night,’ responded Gordon and Fudge”] “Yes, but then they’d want their expenses guaranteed.” “Look here,” observed Dick, “why couldn’t we charge admission to some of the games after we got started? I dare say quite a lot of folks would pay a quarter to see a good game.” “They might,” conceded Lanny. “We could try it, anyway. If we could get, say, a hundred admissions, we’d have twenty-five dollars, and then we could pay the expenses of any team around here. That’s a bully idea, Dick. As a manager you’re all to the good.” “I thank you,” replied Dick, setting his crutches under his arms. “We’ll talk it over to-morrow. You come over, too, Lanny; and Fudge if he is not in the throes of literary composition.” “I’ll walk around with you,” said Lanny. “It’s too bully a night to go to bed, anyway. Good-night, fellows.” “Good-night,” responded Gordon and Fudge. “Good-night, Dick.” They watched the two as long as they were in sight in the white radiance of the moon, and then: “They’re two of the finest fellows in the world,” said Fudge warmly. “And wouldn’t Dick be a wonder if he was like the rest of us, Gordie?” “Y—yes,” replied Gordon thoughtfully, “only—sometimes I think that maybe if Dick was like the rest of us, Fudge, he might not be the splendid chap he is.” Fudge objected to that, but afterward, returning home by way of the back fence, he thought it over. “I suppose,” he told himself, as he paused on his porch for a final look at the moon, “what Gordie means is that tribulations ennoble our characters.” That struck him as a fine phrase, and he made a mental note of it. Still later, as he lay in bed with the moonlight illumining his room, he began to plan a perfectly corking story around the phrase, with Dick as the hero. Unfortunately, perhaps, for American literature, sleep claimed him before he had completed it. CHAPTER V DICK VISITS THE POINT