and Joe was startled when he looked at his watch and found that it was nearly eleven o’clock.

“I’ll have to go,” he said reluctantly. “I had no idea it was so late.”

“Why should you hurry?” asked Reggie. “The season’s over now in the National League, and the World Series won’t begin for a week or more. I should think you might have a little leeway in the matter of sitting up late.”

“I’ll have plenty of leeway before long,” laughed Joe. “But just now I want to keep in the very pink of condition. I’ll need every ounce of strength and vitality I’ve got before I get through the Series.”

He would have dearly loved a chance for a few words with Mabel in private before he went away, but Reggie failed to appreciate that fact, and he accompanied the pair even when they went out to the elevator. But Joe avenged himself by holding Mabel’s hand much longer and more closely than he had ever dared do before, and the girl did not dream of calling for help.

But although Joe had been balked in saying what he had wanted to that night, he felt much surer of Mabel’s feelings toward him, and his heart was a tumult of joyous emotions as he made his way home to the rooms he shared with Jim.

He found Barclay sound asleep, at which he rejoiced. He was in no mood for chaff and banter. He wanted to go over in his mind every incident of that memorable evening—to recall the tones of Mabel’s voice, the look in Mabel’s eyes. It was a delightful occupation and took a good while, so that it was late when he dropped off to sleep.

He was awakened at a much later hour than usual the next morning by a vigorous tugging at the shoulder of his pajamas; and, opening one sleepy eye, saw Jim fully dressed standing at the side of his bed.

“Go away and let me sleep,” grumbled Joe, turning over on his pillow for another forty winks.

“For the love of Pete, man! how much sleep do you want?” snorted Jim. “What are you trying to do, forget your sorrows? Here it is after nine o’clock, and I’ve already had my breakfast and a shave. Get a wiggle on and see what it is to be a popular hero.”

“Stop your joshing,” muttered Joe, sleepily.

“Josh nothing,” Jim came back at him. “If you’ll just open those liquid orbs of yours and give this room the once over, you’ll see whether I’m joshing or not.”

This stirred Joe’s curiosity and he sat up in bed with a jerk.

“Great Scott!” he exclaimed, as he saw the room littered with a mass of boxes and packages that covered every available spot on chairs and tables and overflowed to the floor. “Where did you get all this junk? Going to open a department store?”

“I guess you’ll be able to if they keep on coming,” returned Jim. “I’ve been signing receipts for express packages until I’ve got the writer’s cramp. And there’s a pile of letters and telegrams, and there’s a bunch of reporters down in the lobby waiting for an interview with your Royal Highness, and—but what’s the use? Get up, you lazy hulk, and get busy.”

“It surely looks as though it were going to be my busy day,” grinned Joe, as he jumped out of bed and rushed to the shower.

He shaved and dressed in a hurry and then ate a hasty breakfast, after which he saw the reporters.

Those clever and wideawake young men greeted him with enthusiasm and overwhelmed him with questions that ranged from the date of his birth to his opinion on the outcome of the World Series. They knew that their papers would give them a free hand in the matter of space, and they were in search not of paragraphs but of columns from the idol of the hour.

“You look limp and wilted, Joe,” laughed Jim, as they went back to their rooms.

“It’s no wonder,” growled Joe. “Those fellows got the whole sad story of my life. They hunted out every fact and shook it as a terrier shakes a rat. They turned me inside out. The only thing they forgot to ask was when I got my first tooth and whether I’d ever had the measles. And, oh, yes, they didn’t find out what was my favorite breakfast food. But now let’s get busy on these parcels and see what’s in them.”

“What’s in them is plenty,” prophesied Jim, “and these are only the few drops before the shower.”

It was a varied collection of objects that they took from the packages. There were boxes of cigars galore, enough to keep the chums in “smokes” for a year to come. There were canes and silk shirts and neckties accompanied by requests from dealers to be permitted to call their product the “Matson.” There were bottles of wine and whiskey, which met with short welcome from these clean young athletes, who took them over to the bathroom, cracked their necks and poured the contents down the drain of the washbasin, until, as Jim declared, the place smelled for all the world like a “booze parlor.”

“No merry mucilage for ours,” declared Joe, grimly. “We’ve seen what it did for Hartley, as clever a pitcher as ever twirled a ball.”

“Right you are,” affirmed Jim. “There’s none of us strong enough to down old John Barleycorn, and the only way to be safe is never to touch it.”

After they had gone through the lot and rung for a porter to carry away the litter of paper and boxes, they attacked the formidable pile of letters and telegrams.

Among the former were two offers from vaudeville managers, urging Joe to go on the stage the coming winter. They offered him a guarantee of five hundred dollars a week. They would prepare a monologue for him, or, if he preferred to pair up with a partner, they would have a sketch arranged for him.

“That sounds awfully tempting, Joe,” said Jim, as they looked up from the letters they had been reading together.

“It’s a heap of money,” agreed Joe, “and I do hate to pass it up. But I won’t accept. I’m not an actor and I know it and they know it. I’d simply be capitalizing my popularity. I’d feel like a freak in a dime museum.”

“How do you know you’re not an actor?” asked Jim. “You might have it in you. You never know till you try.”

But Joe shook his head.

“No,” he said, “there’s no use kidding myself. And even if I could make good, I wouldn’t do it. You know what it did for Markwith the season after he made his record of nineteen straight. He never was the same pitcher after that. The late hours, the feverish atmosphere, the irregular life don’t do a ball player any good. They take all the vim and sand out of him. No vaudeville for yours truly.”

“Well,” said Jim, “you’re the doctor. And I guess you’re right. But it certainly seems hard to let that good money get away when it’s fairly begging you to take it.”

The telegrams came from all over the country. A lot were from Joe’s old team-mates on the St. Louis club, including Rad Chase and Campbell. Others were from newspaper publishers offering fancy prices if Joe would write some articles for them, describing the games in the forthcoming World Series. Joe knew perfectly well that this would entail no time or labor on his part. Some bright reporter would actually write the articles, and all Joe needed to do was to let his name be signed to them as the author. But the practice was beginning to be frowned upon by the baseball magnates, and it was in a certain sense a fraud upon the public, so that Joe mentally decided in the negative.

One telegram was far more precious to Joe than all the others put together. It came from Clara, his only sister, to whom he was devotedly attached, and was sent in the name of all the little family at