“The boss says he would be obliged to you if you would make less noise.”

It was a tall and red-faced young man who brought this message to the Catalpa Nine, as they were gathered in the room of Captain Hiram Porter, in their lodging-house, after the great match game. Al Heaton had hurried to join the boys, as soon as he had sent to Catalpa his despatch announcing the result of the contest in the most glowing terms consistent with the rate of telegraph tolls and the needed conciseness of a despatch. All hands were in that flow of animal spirits that might have been expected from nearly a dozen young fellows who are elated over a great victory and who have laboriously repressed their jubilation until they are alone.

“There! I told you, boys, that your skylarking would bring up the landlord. Oh, I say, Neddie, quit your fooling. You can’t throw ‘The Lily,’ if you try all night; and we are making such a racket that the whole house is disturbed.” This was Captain Porter’s admonition.

“Besides,” said Larry Boyne, who was panting with the unwonted exertion of boosting Charlie King over the headboard of the bedstead, where Charlie was determined he would not go, “besides all that, it’s time for you and me, Hi, to get ready to go out to dinner.”

“Where are you two fellows going to dinner?” demanded half a dozen voices at once. “Are you going to throw off on us in that way?”

Captain Hiram explained that he and Larry had accepted an invitation to take dinner with Judge Morris, with whose family Mr. Heaton and Albert were staying during the progress of the games in Chicago. The Morrises, he added, lived on the north side of the river, and he and Larry should be ready to start, instead of “cutting up” to show how tickled they were with their recent victory.

“But ’twas a famous victory,” quoted Larry, “for all that, and I would just as soon stay with the boys and celebrate it as go out to dine with Judge Morris, who, they say, is a heavy swell.”

“I happen to know that Miss Alice Howell and her friend Miss Ida are stopping with the Morrises, Larry,” said Ben Burton, with an unpleasant leer, “and you and Hiram will be in clover; so you can afford to shake us until the next game.”

Larry grew very red in the face at this, and there was a dangerous gleam in Hiram Porter’s eye as he noted the ill-natured scowl on Burton’s countenance. He restrained himself, however, and said, “Why do you continually harp on the Judge’s daughter, Ben? The young lady is from our own town, and she is more interested in the success of the Catalpas than some of its members, I reckon; at least, I think so, judging from appearances.”

“What do you mean by that, Hi Porter?” demanded Ben, hotly. “You have insinuated that sort of thing too many times in my hearing. And I want you to understand that you can’t put on any captain’s airs over me, now that we are off the field. I am my own master for tonight anyway.”

“Come, come, boys,” interposed Larry, soothingly. “Don’t let us mar the enjoyment of this evening by lugging in any old quarrels or little differences. We shall all have to pull together tomorrow, if we are to beat the Calumets. They are going to give us a stiff brush, and you may depend on that. Come, Hiram, let’s be off.”

Burton said something, sullenly and indistinctly, about the certainty of the defeat of the Catalpas, tomorrow, which caught the ear of “The Lily,” who, still puffing with the effects of his tussle with Neddie Ellis, was regarding the malcontent Ben with an expression of wonder on his good-natured face. He slowly dropped out a few words of comment, in his usual fashion, upon Burton’s unfriendly attitude and then added:

“I say, I wonder why you don’t give up playing baseball, since you find so little fun in it. ’Pears to me you are all the time out ’o sorts-like. You don’t enjoy good health, Ben, and that’s what is the matter along of you. Now, why do you think that the Calumets are going to get away with us, tomorrow?”

But before Ben could form a reply and cover the confusion that crept over his face, Neddie Ellis, who was the universal favorite of the club, broke in with, “Oh, I say, boys, do you know what these Chicago people call us? why they call us ‘The Cats.’ That’s short for Catalpas, I suppose. We ought to call the Calumets ‘The Cads,’ and I guess that would be getting even.”

Under cover of the laugh which this sally raised, Hiram, Larry, and young Heaton departed to fulfil their engagement on the north side, Ben Burton looking after them with a darkened countenance.

“Ben is angry because he is not invited to Judge Morris’s,” said Larry, as the three young fellows stepped lightly off in search of a street car. “He has a jealous temper, and the least thing that looks like a slight sets him off.”

“Well,” said Albert, “Alice said that the Judge would have liked to have invited the whole nine, if he had had room to entertain them properly; but he hadn’t, and so he invited only those with whom the governor was most acquainted.”

“To say nothing of Miss Alice?” added Hiram, slyly.

Albert admitted that Miss Alice’s wishes were consulted in the matter, and that it was only natural that she, being a visitor, should indicate her preferences in the matter.

“What does it signify, anyhow?” said Larry, a little impatiently. “It seems to me that Ben Burton is ready to fly out at the least provocation. I almost wish we had never thought of going over to Judge Morris’s. I am sure I have tried my level best to keep the peace with Ben, but he seems to grow more and more cantankerous every day. To think of raising a breeze over such a trifle as this of our going out to dinner without him! It makes me ashamed of my companionship with him.”

The conversation was stopped by their entering a street car where they were entertained by the audible comments of the passengers on the wonderful game that had been played that afternoon. Baseball in Chicago is one of the favorite pastimes of the people. But there was so much of the element of unexpectedness in the result of that day’s game that it set the tongues of everybody to wagging. Unknown and in silence, the champions of the Catalpa Nine heard themselves and their playing discussed with great freedom and animation. The general verdict was that “The Cats” would, next day, receive their reward in the shape of a “basket of goose eggs” with which they would depart for home, sadder and wiser for their visit.

“What do you think of that for an opinion, Larry?” asked Hiram, laughingly, as they alighted from the car, one block from their destination. “What do you think of the woman in the corner who said that the Calumets were only encouraging us on to our defeat?”

Larry replied that that was precisely what Ben Burton thought, and Hiram ejaculated, “Oh, he does, does he? Then it seems that our shortstop and our adversaries, or the friends of our adversaries, agree as to what is going to happen tomorrow.”

“Perhaps they are right,” said Albert, cheerily. “But here we are,” and stopping before a handsome house, he darted up the steps and rang the door bell.

While the lads waited for admission, Larry turned and looked westward, with wistful eyes, and said,

“I wonder how they are taking the news in Catalpa, about now?”

Albert’s reply that they were probably having a jollification really described what was at that moment taking place. Tom Selby was the happy recipient of early telegrams from Larry, and the editor of The Leaf sustained his reputation by putting out bulletins from Al Heaton and his father, at frequent intervals during the progress of the game. The excitement waxed high as the contest proceeded, and when the final result was reached, the town was fairly mad with joy. The event had eclipsed everything of the kind that had happened during the season. Every man who had a flag hung it out to the breeze. Jedediah Van Orman, “The Lily’s” father, took up a collection from the willing shopkeepers and bought a supply of powder, with which he proceeded to fire a salute from four anvils, the only artillery then accessible in the town. Victory brooded over Catalpa, and in every house as the red sun went down, that night, there was but one theme of conversation⁠—baseball.