shall I send it, sir?"

"Eh? Oh, shoot it along to Mrs. Archibald Moffam, at the Cosmopolis. Not
to-day, you know. Buzz it in first thing to-morrow."

Having completed the satisfactory deal, the jeweller threw off the
business manner and became chatty.

"So you are going to the ball-game? It should be an interesting
contest."

Reggie van Tuyl, now--by his own standards--completely awake, took
exception to this remark.

"Not a bit of it!" he said, decidedly. "No contest! Can't call it a
contest! Walkover for the Pirates!"

Archie was stung to the quick. There is that about baseball which
arouses enthusiasm and the partisan spirit in the unlikeliest bosoms. It
is almost impossible for a man to live in America and not become gripped
by the game; and Archie had long been one of its warmest adherents.
He was a whole-hearted supporter of the Giants, and his only grievance
against Reggie, in other respects an estimable young man, was that the
latter, whose money had been inherited from steel-mills in that city,
had an absurd regard for the Pirates of Pittsburg.

"What absolute bally rot!" he exclaimed. "Look what the Giants did to
them yesterday!"

"Yesterday isn't to-day," said Reggie.

"No, it'll be a jolly sight worse," said Archie. "Looney Biddle'll be
pitching for the Giants to-day."

"That's just what I mean. The Pirates have got him rattled. Look what
happened last time."

Archie understood, and his generous nature chafed at the innuendo.
Looney Biddle--so-called by an affectionately admiring public as the
result of certain marked eccentricities--was beyond dispute the greatest
left-handed pitcher New York had possessed in the last decade. But there
was one blot on Mr. Biddle's otherwise stainless scutcheon. Five weeks
before, on the occasion of the Giants' invasion of Pittsburg, he had
gone mysteriously to pieces. Few native-born partisans, brought up to
baseball from the cradle, had been plunged into a profounder gloom on
that occasion than Archie; but his soul revolted at the thought that
that sort of thing could ever happen again.

"I'm not saying," continued Reggie, "that Biddle isn't a very fair
pitcher, but it's cruel to send him against the Pirates, and somebody
ought to stop it. His best friends should interfere. Once a team gets
a pitcher rattled, he's never any good against them again. He loses his
nerve."

The jeweller nodded approval of this sentiment.

"They never come back," he said, se