“Get wet?” “Not a drop.” “How is that?” “I was wading with the accompaniment of a tutor through some of the dryest books a man ever tackled.” “You’re the same old Ned,” laughed Walter. “I’m afraid that’s the worst of it,” said Ned somewhat ruefully. “Dan,” he added abruptly, turning to the new boy, “when will you come down to the diamond and give your mighty right arm a chance to show what it can do?” CHAPTER XV WALTER’S SUGGESTIONS “I’ll come any time you say,” replied Dan. “All right,” said Ned cheerily. “We’ll fix it up in a day or two. We ought to start right in on our inter-form games and find out what material we can count on for the spring.” Several other boys dropped in and the two visitors departed. There were continued greetings among the noisy, light-hearted boys, and in spite of the fact that the work of the new year was about to begin it was manifest that most of them were glad to be back in school once more. To Dan the entire scene was so filled with novelty that he was an interested spectator, taking but little part in the conversations that occurred whenever the boys came to his room or hailed one another on the campus. In the dining-hall, which was in a large central building to which all the boys and many of the teachers came for their meals, his interest became still more marked, for here for the first time he saw the boys who were to be his leaders in his new life. It was dusk when the boys filed out of the dining-hall, and Dan dropped behind his roommate to walk with Ned. “I’m glad you came with Walter,” Ned was saying. “We’re in great need of a new pitcher. ‘Red’ Chandler finished his work here this spring and has gone up to Harvard. He’ll make the college nine first thing, you see if he doesn’t. He’s a born ball-player and he had the finest assortment of curves that the Tait School ever saw. He pitched a one-hit game against the Yale freshman team in June. Never made a hit, never got a ball outside the diamond until the ninth inning, and that was a scratch. The third-baseman of the freshman team let the ball hit his bat. I don’t believe he ever struck at it at all. If you can come anywhere near ‘Red’ you can own the whole school.” Dan listened as Ned rattled on in his noisy boyish way, but he seldom replied except to certain direct questions. “Can you pitch a drop?” Ned asked. “Moulton said I could.” “Good. He ought to know. Red had a ‘jump’ that was simply fierce. We always saved it for the third strike. And the beauty of it all was that I did not have to signal for it, so the other fellows never caught on. No signal just meant the ‘jump.’ You see, I had caught Red two years and we became almost like a machine.” “The boys”――Dan started to say fellows but corrected himself――“must be sorry to lose him.”