Rob nodded in agreement. "And you've got to be ready for any one of those thousand things. That's where the fun comes in, and the skill. When you know you can handle any ball that's likely to come your way and handle it right, there's fun just in waiting." "I suppose that's true. I wish I knew as much baseball as you do. Honestly, now, do you think I'm ever going to learn to pitch?" This was one of the times when Patterson needed encouragement. "Yes, I do," Owen replied earnestly. "You're gaining all the time. If you're willing to count by the weeks instead of the days, you'll see a gain yourself. You may never be able to do the things with a ball that Carle can do,--he's got a wonderful wrist, that fellow!--but you may be just as good a pitcher." "As good as Carle!" cried Patterson, with a grin of incredulity. "You're jollying me!" "Not a bit!" Owen retorted. "You never will see that it isn't what you do to the ball, but what the batsman doesn't do to it, that shows that you are a pitcher. Suppose Carle has ten chances and throws five of them away, and you have eight and throw away only two, who is the better man?" Patterson shook his head doubtfully. "It's one thing to stand in the cage and put 'em where you say; it's a different thing to face a batter in a game and feel that he may drive the next one over the fence." "You can put 'em where I say just the same, can't you?" retorted Owen, sharply, as he opened his books. There was good promise in Patterson, but these attacks of despondency were of distinctly bad omen. "You didn't tell me how Payner got hold of Eddy," said Patterson, returning again to the topic from which he had been diverted by the ever recurrent baseball. "Didn't I? Well, Payner is a great fellow for bugs,--in fact, for every kind of animal, big or little, that has more than two legs; and Eddy is cracked on trees and birds. Payner spent all his half-holidays last fall, when he ought to have been at the football games, up the river looking for bugs and slugs. He found Eddy up there watching birds. So they got acquainted." Patterson emitted a little sniff, midway between a sneer and a chuckle. "Oh, you needn't laugh! He doesn't loaf away his Saturday afternoons like the rest of us. Why, he's got one of the best collections of _coleoptera_ in existence!" "Oh, has he!" exclaimed the bewildered Patterson. Owen swung round as if to end the conversation, and raising his book to the level of his eyes, sniggered covertly into its pages. Opposite him sat Patterson, awed into silence by the ponderous polysyllable, of whose meaning he was loth to confess his ignorance. So the study began. That evening Eddy came in after dinner to see some new specimens that Payner had just received from Florida. It was lecture night, and the bell sounded just as Payner opened the case. "Look here, Eddy, I want to go to that lecture to night. It's on the Grand Canyon, you know. Are you going?"