"Rudie Schlachweiler!" murmured Ivy, dreamily. "What a strong
name!"

"Want some peanuts?" inquired her father.

"Does one eat peanuts at a ball game?"

"It ain't hardly legal if you don't," Pa Keller assured her.

"Two sacks," said Ivy. "Papa, why do they call it a diamond,
and what are those brown bags at the corners, and what does it
count if you hit the ball, and why do they rub their hands in the
dust and then--er--spit on them, and what salary does a pitcher
get, and why does the red-haired man on the other side dance around
like that between the second and third brown bag, and doesn't a
pitcher do anything but pitch, and wh----?"

"You're on," said papa.

After that Ivy didn't miss a game during all the time that the
team played in the home town. She went without a new hat, and
didn't care whether Jean Valjean got away with the goods or not,
and forgot whether you played third hand high or low in bridge.
She even became chummy with Undine Meyers, who wasn't her kind of
a girl at all. Undine was thin in a voluptuous kind of way, if
such a paradox can be, and she had red lips, and a roving eye, and
she ran around downtown without a hat more than was strictly
necessary. But Undine and Ivy had two subjects in common. They
were baseball and love. It is queer how the limelight will make