“Why not?” he repeated.

“My last game of ball is played,” I said. “It seems--I am too old for it, or something. They--they don’t want me to. At least not in big games, and I couldn’t indulge as an amateur.”

“My gosh,” he said, “that’s fierce!”

I nodded. I almost never cry--in fact, I don’t cry any oftener than Willy Jepson does, but I was near it then, so I looked down at the hedge and broke twigs.

“Why,” he went on, “it’s fierce! You have the making of a big leaguer--that is, if you’d been a man--I say, it’s fierce. Your drop curves----” He paused, and that pause meant a lot.

fierce

“Just because you’re a girl?” he asked. I admitted it. I had to.

“That’s fierce!” he said again. His kindness helped me a great deal. And his commendation was not a light thing, for Willy does the best spit balls in our county. They are really dreams of poetic beauty and almost never fail him. I looked up and said: “Thank you.”

And again he said: “My gosh, Nat, that’s fierce!” And I did feel cheered up. Then I heard uncle’s voice--calling me--and I went in. I found him mounting a black beetle.

gosh

fierce

“No more----” he began, and then looked perplexed. He scratched his head and dislocated one pair of his glasses, and I supplied, “ball.”

“Why, yes,” he said, “that was it.” And then: “You are to go to your aunt’s the last of this month. . . . Mrs. Bradly thinks she can get your clothes ready by that time. . . . We will miss you, my child. . . . Let me see. . . . Ho hum! Long feelers and hard back--page nine hundred and twenty-seven.” I left him to his bugs.

was

and

I went to the kitchen, but I only stood in the door for a moment, and then I backed away, for Mrs. Bradly was crying--awfully hard--her face buried in the roller towel. And I knew it was because I was going away. . . . I felt that way too, but I never cry, so I went up to my room and got out my fishing tackle and tried to make a fly for a shallow, shady stream out of some gray and green silk and a grasshopper wing. . . . But it didn’t divert me much. . . . I didn’t think I could exist very long in 

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