One day toward the end of the discouraging fortnight, when Rob was feeling particularly blue over the situation and wondering whether it would not be better after all to let the catching go altogether and take his chances on his hitting for a fielding position, he fell in with Patterson on the way down street, and asked him casually how he was getting on with pitching. "Not very well," answered Patterson, ruefully. "I can't seem to learn anything." "Who catches you?" asked Rob. "Foxcroft," replied Patterson, gloomily. "He's a good backstop, I suppose, but he never tells me anything, and you can't learn by yourself. Poole ought to fix it so that we can get some instruction, I think." Rob did not answer. He was marvelling at the contrariness of circumstances. Here was O'Connell who might have instruction but wouldn't take it, and Patterson who wanted it but couldn't get it! "A man who ought to know told me once that I had the makings of a pitcher in me,--the arm swing, snappy wrist, and all that, you know,--but I've had mighty little chance for coaching and no such experience as these fellows here get, so I don't know whether he was fooling me or not. I don't seem to be getting ahead at all now." "Oh, you mustn't be discouraged," said Rob, unfairly assuming in his own discouragement the right to blame the other's faint-heartedness. "It takes time to learn to pitch." "It takes something more than time," Patterson declared with emphasis. "A year of the kind of thing I'm getting won't be much better than a month. You don't have to eat a bushel of apples to find out whether they're rotten or not. One is enough." Rob hesitated. An idea had suddenly occurred to him, an idea that might be good. Why shouldn't he catch Patterson, and let O'Connell take Foxcroft? He knew nothing of Patterson, it was true, but he did know about O'Connell, and under the circumstances the unknown seemed attractive. "How would you like to take me for a change, and let O'Connell have Foxcroft?" Patterson's face spoke instantly a joyful acceptance of the proposal. His words, which came later, evidently represented second thoughts. "Wouldn't I! But O'Connell would kick, though. He isn't going to swap you for Foxcroft." "I don't believe he'd mind," returned Owen, with a smile of amusement tinged with sadness. "He can't learn anything from me, so Foxcroft would do just as well. I'd like to catch some one I could work with, and feel an interest in and try to push along. A net would be about as good for O'Connell as I am; all the advantage I have over the net is that I throw the balls back." "Let's change, then," said Patterson, eagerly. "If O'Connell doesn't want your help, I do. You'll find me ready to learn all right. You see Poole,--no, I'll see him and tell him we'd like to bunk in together. I don't believe it'll make any difference to him."