dn't do to make Buck
jealous!"

He laughed in his cheery way.

"I don't think it would be easy to make him jealous of you now," she
answered. "And I'm so glad he is to pitch for you Saturday! I want to
thank you for that, myself. It was just like you to send such an
invitation."

Merriwell's eyes dropped under her earnest look. He dared not tell her
just then that the invitation had been procured by Dunstan Kirk.

"Who told you he is to pitch Saturday?"

"Why, he told me so this morning himself."

"And, of course, you have told Elsie and Inza?"

"Yes."

"Well, I want to see Inza, and have a talk with her, about the New
London races. So I think I will take a car for Mrs. Moran's."

Winnie had informed him that both Inza and Elsie had gone on an errand
of mercy to the home of the grandmother of Barney Lynn.

"And you won't come in, even a little while? You prefer their society to
mine, I see! I am ashamed of you, Frank Merriwell! You are not as
gallant as you used to be."

Her voice was merry and her heart light.

"Some other afternoon or evening I shall be glad to come in and talk you
to death. Just now I am pressed for time."

"I ought to have gone down there with them," she confessed. "But it
seemed that I couldn't get away. Frank, you don't know what angels of
mercy those girls have been! Elsie found out that Mrs. Moran was
starving and dying by inches for lack of proper food and medicines, and
since then she and Inza have been down there every day, and often two or
three times a day."

"I trust they don't venture after nightfall!"

Frank was thinking of a fight Jack Ready had while rescuing Elsie from
the drunken ruffian, Jim Haskins.

Then he thanked Winnie for her invitation, said good-by, and hurried
away to catch the first car going in the direction which he wished to
take.

"I hope Badger is entirely worthy of her," he thought, his mind on
Winnie Lee. "She is a fine girl, and if he gets her he will get a prize.
Now, if they don't pass me, coming back in another car! Winnie hasn't
the least idea that Buck was intoxicated when he went aboard the
_Crested Foam_, and she shall never know it from me!"

Neither of the girls heard Merriwell's gentle rap on Mrs. Moran's door,
and he pushed into the house without further ceremony, feeling sure that
they were busy in caring for the old lady or that her condition was such
that they could not leave her. Then, looking through the doorway at the
right