ball club that ever
lived, but lands knows that if some of us women don't get busy right
away there's one ball club that's goin' to be ruined without any
rustlin' skirts to be blamed."

Mrs. William Clancy, her ample form loosely enveloped in a huge,
flowered kimono, dropped her fancy work into her lap and fanned herself
with a folded newspaper.

"Why, Mother Clancy," ejaculated Betty Tabor, sitting on a stool by the
window of the Clancy apartment, "one would think to hear you talk that
we had lost the pennant already."

"Now, there's Willie," continued Mrs. Clancy, ignoring the protest,
"goin' round with a grouch on all the time like he could bite nails in
two. There's that nice McCarthy boy frettin' his heart out because you
haven't treated him nicely, and Swanson worryin' about something. And
there's Williams sneakin' round like he'd been caught robbin' a hen
roost."

"Mother Clancy," protested the girl, reddening, "you have no right to
say I haven't been treating Mr. McCarthy well. A girl cannot throw
herself at a man--especially an engaged man."

"How do you know he's engaged?" demanded Mrs. Clancy. "Lands sakes, I
haven't heard him announcing his engagement, and he looks at you across
the dining room as sad as a calf chewing a dish rag."

"I overheard--I saw the girl," admitted Betty Tabor, blushing as she
bowed her pretty head over her work. "She was telling him she wouldn't
marry him if he continued to play ball--besides, Mr. Williams met her
uncle, and he said they were engaged."

"Is she pretty?" demanded Mrs. Clancy.

"Beautiful," admitted Miss Tabor. "She's tall and fair and graceful,
and she had on such a wonderful gown all trimmed"----

"It looks to me," interrupted Mrs. Clancy, cutting off the description
of the dressmaking details heartlessly, "as if someone was just
jealous."

"Why, Mother Clancy," said the girl, shocked and red, "you must think
me perfectly frightful to believe I'd act that way."

"Oh, girls your age are all fools," said Mrs. Clancy complacently. "I
reckon I was myself at your age. Why, if Willie even spoke to another
girl I'd go out and hunt up two beaux just to show him I didn't care.
You went out with Williams when we came in last night, didn't you?"

"Yes; he asked papa and me to late supper," the girl admitted. "But it
really wasn't what you think. I wanted to find out something from
him--something that's been worrying me."

"Did you find out?" asked the