John dropped his rake over the fence on his return, and glanced at his watch as a precaution. It was nearly five! Blame the paper business anyway! Never did he start some important project but what time flew so swiftly that he had to leave just when things were getting interesting.

He called an explanatory "paper time!" to his team mates, turned his implement over to Red, and left for the little delicatessen store.

All the next Monday afternoon the boys labored while their captain stood around with his hands in his pockets and watched condescendingly. John picked up Bill on his return from the paper route, and went over to the lot to inspect the carefully combed playing area. The broken gla.s.s, rain-soaked paper caps, sticks, boards, and dead gra.s.s had been carefully a.s.sembled in conical heaps near the railroad fence, and he beamed his approval.

"It's going to be peachy, Silvey," he broke out.

"Yes, and Sid'll say he did it," his chum commented bitterly.

"What do we care? We'll put the home plate here," he indicated a spot some fifty feet north of the dairy buildings. "Then the sun won't get in our eyes. I'll borrow dad's big tapeline to measure off the other bases, and the grand stand can go here. It'll be big enough to hold 'most fifty people!"

Silvey listened in amazement. He could run a football team as quarter-back to perfection, or break through the opposing line time and again, as he had done last autumn, but this fertile foresight was something beyond his comprehension.

"You talk as if you see it," he said finally.

"Why, I do." John dismissed the matter as worthy of no further comment.

"But before we do any of these things, we've got to cut the gra.s.s and see where the b.u.mps in the ground are."

For two afternoons the whirr of lawnmowers was heard over the "Tigers'

Home Grounds." When the many hollows and hummocks in the uneven turf came to light, the youthful construction boss ordered that shovels be brought, and another day pa.s.sed in transporting dirt and leveling the obstructions off. Pail after pail of water was carried from the dairy buildings to wet down and harden the new, loose earth, and it was Sat.u.r.day morning before the distances between the various bases and the pitcher's box could be measured off.

"We'll start filling in the paths with cinders now," said John, as Silvey drove a peg into the ground to mark the location of the home plate.

"Won't they hurt when you slide on them?" drawled Perry Alford.

"But there's nothing else to use, is there?"

"They're starting a flat building next old lady Meeker's on Southern Avenue," the boy suggested. "Why not get sand from there?"

John shot him a glance of approval and called to the team members.

"Everybody get a pail and meet at Silvey's," he concluded, as they started for the railroad tracks.

"I'll sit here and watch the tools," said Sid, brazenly.

"Aren't you going to work at all?" broke out Silvey impatiently.

"Don't have to," was the unperturbed reply. "I'm the captain."

They left their nominal leader to do as he desired and scattered to commandeer the various family buckets and fiber pails. Skinny, who lived farthest from the Silvey's, came up at last with his utensil, and they set off, single file, past Neighborhood Hall and the corner grocery stores, and around to quiet, sedate Southern Avenue, beating a crude marching rhythm on the tins as they went. At the sight of the ten-foot sandhill which the excavations for the apartments had formed, John broke into a run.

"Beat you there!" he shouted.

Away they went after him, pell-mell, and dashed up the yielding sides to bury their pails deep in the golden particles. Silvey braced himself, tugged his load free, and staggered along the walk for perhaps thirty feet. John caught up with him and also halted for a rest.

At last they started again, but it was no light-hearted, carefree, return trip for the "Tigers." The sand-filled buckets weighed too much to be used as drums, and they retraced their steps slowly, dropping them every few minutes to ease their aching wrists. In front of Neighborhood Hall, Skinny found a blister on one of his hands.

"Think we'll ever get back?" he asked, despairingly.

"It isn't so far now," John encouraged him. "We've only got to go another block before we turn. Then it's a half-block down to the hole in the fence. Come on. I'll stump you to carry yours as far as the railroad tracks."

Thus by making it a matter of athletic prowess the boys carried their loads to the destination. But the little heaps on the dusty earth looked pitifully insignificant. Skinny borrowed a pin and lanced the white protuberance at the base of his second finger.

"Jiminy," he mourned, as he squeezed the water out. "It's going to be an awful lot of work, fellows."

They raked the sand level along the path from the plate to first base.

Not by the wildest stretch of imagination could they seem to reach even a quarter of the distance, and protruding gra.s.s blades showed that the covering was far too scanty.

"Where's your wagon, John?" asked Red Brown suddenly.

"Busted," said John, reproachfully. "Have you forgotten?"

During the summer preceding, a fever of wagon building had seized the boys. Every spare wheel and tricycle frame in the block had been requisitioned for the construction of a half-dozen little vehicles which suddenly appeared to scud down the sidewalks and over the smooth macadam street. There had been discussions and disputes as to speed, and John's wagon, a long, well-oiled affair with a coat of red, discarded house paint on its framework, had come to grief in a collision with Brown's, one sunny afternoon. Even Silvey, the optimist, who had furnished the motive power, had looked at the wreckage in well-founded despair.

"Where's yours?" Red turned abruptly to the Harrison boys.

"In the bas.e.m.e.nt."

Skinny Mosher's, too, was still in existence. All the rest of the morning and afternoon, the two wagons ran merrily toward the Southern Avenue sand hill, or creaked slowly and laboriously back to the "Tigers'

Home Grounds," with such good effect that but a scant ten feet of path remained to be filled in when John's paper route called him.

Silvey and he sauntered over that evening after supper to make the final inspection of the work.

"Just like the park diamonds, isn't it?" he asked, as Silvey stretched a pair of weary arms.

"And Sid said he was glad he thought of it. And we worked like everything while he stood around!"

John scarcely heard him as he stood, eyes a-dream, looking over the even, carefully raked turf. "The grand stand comes next, Bill. Do you think we ought to tear down the shack for lumber?"

Bill demurred. That shaky building occupied too great a place of importance in the boys' lives to justify such a sacrifice. Surely there were enough new buildings being erected in the neighborhood without that.

Sid made an announcement on the following Monday which made the postponement of that last bit of construction work imperative.

"Saw the captain of the 'Jeffersons,'" he beamed as the little group gathered about him on the baseball diamond. "We're going to play 'em this Sat.u.r.day."

"What?" John exploded. Sid nodded his head.

"They've got the best team around," Silvey broke out. "And they've been practicing in the park ever since the snow melted. How can we lick 'em now?"

Sid shrugged his shoulders aggravatingly.

"Haven't you any brains at all?" John stormed.

"I'm captain," Sid snapped back at the insurgents. "I'm running this team. If you don't like it, you can quit!"

The voice of Skinny Mosher, the peacemaker, broke in: "Aw, kids, never mind. 'Tain't so bad as it looks. Let's start practicing now, and maybe we can beat 'em anyway."

It was excellent advice, and the boys scampered over the tracks for home, to return singly and in pairs with their baseball paraphernalia.

John took up his old position at first, and Silvey donned his catcher's mitt to receive and return imaginary b.a.l.l.s thrown by the other players.

Red Brown and Perry Alford stationed themselves at second and shortstop respectively, while the Harrison boys stood around and waited until duty should call them to the outfield.