"I am earning my living," he said. "Baseball is the only thing I could do well enough to make money."
"Earn your living?" The girl's surprise was sincere. "You haven't broken with your Uncle Jim, have you?"
The girl's eyes grew wider with surprise, and her tone indicated consternation.
"I have--or, rather, he has--cut me off," the boy explained rather sullenly. "I tried to find a job--thought it would be easy here in the East, but no one wanted my particular brand of ability, and I tried something I knew I could do."
"Then you--then your uncle"--the girl's consternation was real, and she hesitated. "Then our engagement"----
"I thought that was broken before I left," he replied. "You said you wouldn't marry me at all if I told Uncle Jim."
"I thought you would be sensible," she argued. "Everyone at home thinks you are sulking somewhere in Europe because of a quarrel with me. Why didn't you write to me?"
"After our last interview it did not seem necessary," he said.
"Oh, Larry," the girl said, pouting, "you've spoiled it for both of us. If you had done as I wanted you to do everything would have been happy, and now you humiliate me and all your friends by earning your living playing with a lot of roughs."
"They're a pretty decent lot of fellows," he responded indignantly.
"Why did you do it?" she demanded, on the verge of tears from disappointment and annoyance.
"I quarreled with Uncle Jim," he admitted. "I told him I wanted to marry you, and he told me that if I continued to see you he'd cut me off."
"And you lost your temper and left?" she concluded.
"Just about that," he confessed. "He told me I was dependent upon him, and said I'd starve if I had to make my own living. Of course, I could not stand that"----
"Of course," she interjected stormily. "I told you that he hated all our family, but that if we were married he would forgive you."
"I couldn't cheat him that way," he replied with some heat. "Besides you had broken with me. I knew he hated your uncle--but I thought if he knew you"----
"He would have," she said, "if you had given him a chance."
"I told him I could make my living--a living for both if you would have me," he confessed.
"Playing ball?" Her tone was bitter. "And you had an idea you would come East and make your fortune and come back and claim me?"