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It was hard to be called a “kid”–harder still to be left out of the game. And, besides, it wasn’t fair. Marmaduke knew he could catch that ball as well, and hit it as often as any of them.

This is the way it began:–

That morning Jehosophat had gone with the Toyman to Sawyer’s Mill over on Wally’s Creek. Marmaduke felt lonely, for there was nobody but Hepzebiah to play with, and she wouldn’t leave her dolls, and he had long ago gotten past playing with them. As he was wandering forlornly around the barnyard, wondering what he could do, he heard a shout over by the Miller farm.

“You’re out!”

It was a very fascinating cry, an inviting one as well. Looking over the field he saw boys–at least six of them–playing baseball. So he hurried over to get in the game, too.

But his old enemy “Fatty” told him that they didn’t “want any kids hangin’ around.”

And Dicky Means agreed with that.

“Naw, we don’t want any kids!”

“I can catch an’ I can pitch–curves, too,” Marmaduke protested, but they wouldn’t believe him.

“You can’t, either,” Fatty yelled back, “you’d muff it every time. Wouldn’t he, Means?”

He was talking to Dicky Means, but he called him by his last name just because he had heard grown-up men do that sometimes and he thought it was very smart.

Again Dicky Means agreed with Fatty.

“Sure he’d muff it every time.”

Reddy Toms and Harold Skinner didn’t take Marmaduke’s part, nor did Sammy Soapstone, though he had borrowed Marmaduke’s mouth-organ and lost it, and had Marmaduke’s appendix all pickled in alcohol in a big bottle and wouldn’t give it back, either. But they were all bigger than Marmaduke, so what could he do but sit on the fence and watch them, while his fingers fairly itched to catch one of those “flies.” And the crack of the bat against the ball did sound so fine across the field.

At last he couldn’t stand it, so he got down from the fence, and shouted at them,

“I wouldn’t play in your ole game–not for a million dollars!”

And off he walked towards his own barn, swinging his arms all the way, as if he were holding a bat and showing them just how well he could play. My! what long “flies” he would knock, if he only had the chance–over the dead chestnut tree, over the Gold Rooster on the top of the barn, and even above the Long White Finger of the Church Pointing at the Sky. Maybe, sometime, if he hit it hard enough and just right, the ball would sail on and on, and up and up, to the Moon: and the Ole Man there would catch it and throw it down to him again.

But he would have to practice a lot first, so, when he reached the house, he went in and found a ball of his own. He turned it over and over in his fingers, admiring it. It was a fine one, with leather as white as buckskin but very hard, and thick seams sewed in the cover with heavy thread, winding in and out in horseshoe curves.

It had a dandy name, too,–“Rocket,” that was it. And he threw it up high up, up, up, until it reached the eaves of the barn and startled the swallows, who flew out and swept the sky with their pretty wings, chattering angrily at him.

He watched to see where the ball would fall, and ran under it, holding his hands like a little cup. It fell into them, but it fell out even quicker than it had fallen in. Jiminy! but that ball was hard! Marmaduke thought the man who made it should have left the “et” from its name and called it plain “Rock” instead. It was just like a rock covered with hard leather.

He tried it again, but he didn’t throw it up quite so high.