of the Parker Hotel, which is our leading hostelry. The postoffice
receipts record for our town was broken during the months of June, July,
and August.

Mrs. Freddy Van Dyne started the trouble by having the team over to
dinner, "Pug" Coulan and all. After all, why not? No foreign and
impecunious princes penetrate as far inland as our town. They get only
as far as New York, or Newport, where they are gobbled up by many-moneyed
matrons. If Mrs. Freddy Van Dyne found the supply of available lions
limited, why should she not try to content herself with a jackal or so?

Ivy was asked. Until then she had contented herself with gazing at her
hero. She had become such a hardened baseball fan that she followed the
game with a score card, accurately jotting down every play, and keeping
her watch open on her knee.

She sat next to Rudie at dinner. Before she had nibbled her second
salted almond, Ivy Keller and Rudie Schlachweiler understood each other.
Rudie illustrated certain plays by drawing lines on the table-cloth with
his knife and Ivy gazed, wide-eyed, and allowed her soup to grow cold.

The first night that Rudie called, Pa Keller thought it a great joke. He
sat out on the porch with Rudie and Ivy and talked baseball, and got up
to show Rudie how he could have got the goat of that Keokuk catcher if
only he had tried one of his famous open-faced throws. Rudie looked
politely interested, and laughed in all the right places. But Ivy didn't
need to pretend. Rudie Schlachweiler spelled baseball to her. She did
not think of her caller as a good-looking young man in a blue serge suit
and a white shirtwaist. Even as he sat there she saw him as a blonde god
standing on the pitcher's mound, with the scars of battle on his baseball
pants, his left foot placed in front of him at right angles with his
right foot, his gaze fixed on first base in a cunning effort to deceive
the man at bat, in that favorite attitude of pitchers just before they
get ready to swing their left leg and h'ist one over.

The second time that Rudie called, Ma Keller said:

"Ivy, I don't like that ball player coming here to see you. The
neighbors'll talk."

The third time Rudie called, Pa Keller said: "What's that guy doing here
again?"

The fourth time Rudie called, Pa Keller and Ma Keller said, in unison:
"This thing has got to stop."

But it didn't. It had had too good a start. For the rest of the season
Ivy met her knight of the s