otice was coming to you. Go learn the game!"

Then a crowd of players trooped noisily out of the hotel lobby and
swept Sheldon and Carroll down the porch steps toward the waiting
omnibus.

Madge's uncle owned the Kansas City club. She had lived most of her
nineteen years in a baseball atmosphere, but accustomed as she was to
baseball talk and the peculiar banterings and bickerings of the
players, there were times when it seemed all Greek. If a player got
his "notice" it meant he would be released in ten days. A "knocker"
was a ball player who spoke ill of his fellow players. This scrap of
conversation, however, had an unusual interest because Carroll had paid
court to her for a year, and Sheldon, coming to the team that spring,
had fallen desperately in love with her. She liked Sheldon pretty
well, but Carroll fascinated her. She began to wonder if there were
bad feelings between the rivals--to compare them--to get away from
herself and judge them impersonally.

When Pat Donahue, the veteran manager of the team came out, Madge
greeted him with a smile. She had always gotten on famously with Pat,
notwithstanding her imperious desire to handle the managerial reins
herself upon occasions. Pat beamed all over his round ruddy face.

"Miss Madge, you weren't to the park yesterday an' we lost without our
pretty mascot. We shure needed you. Denver's playin' at a fast clip."

"I'm coming out today," replied Miss Ellston, thoughtfully. "Pat,
what's a knocker?"

"Now, Miss Madge, are you askin' me that after I've been coachin' you
in baseball for years?" questioned Pat, in distress.

"I know what a knocker is, as everybody else does. But I want to know
the real meaning, the inside-ball of it, to use your favorite saying."

Studying her grave face with shrewd eyes Donahue slowly lost his smile.

"The inside-ball of it, eh? Come, let's sit over here a bit--the sun's
shure warm today.... Miss Madge, a knocker is the strangest man
known in the game, the hardest to deal with an' what every baseball
manager hates most."

Donahue told her that he believed the term "knocker" came originally
from baseball; that in general it typified the player who strengthened
his own standing by belittling the ability of his team-mates, and by
enlarging upon his own superior qualities. But there were many phases
of this peculiar type. Some players were natural born knockers; others
acquired the name in their later years in the ga