Brother Stanley wasn’t a very good correspondent. Rodney had written him a whole long, newsy letter a fortnight after he had arrived at Maple Hill and had sent him weekly messages in his epistles to his parents, but it was not until well toward the last of October, by which time Rodney had been a Maple Hiller for over a month, that a reply arrived from Ginger. And after he had read it Rodney didn’t know whether to be most amused or most annoyed.  
Dear Kid [Stanley wrote],
 
I meant to answer your letter long ago, but I’ve been awfully busy at the office and outside it, too. Of course the mater and dad have kept you posted on home news. Not much goes on there anyway. Even Omaha’s pretty dull this fall. Well, I’m glad you’ve got shaken down so well at school. It’s a great little school, and I hope you appreciate the advantages you[165] are getting there. I tell you, Rod, if I had it to do over again I’d make a lot better use of my time than I did both there and at college. A fellow never knows until it’s too late what a lot of chances he is wasting at school. But you are more of a grind than I ever was—you call it noser at Maple Hill, don’t you? And I guess you’ll do better in the study line. I see by your letters home that you’ve gone out for football. More fool you. You haven’t the making of a good player, as I’ve told you lots of times and you’re just wasting your time. I tell you football takes a lot of time away from study just when a fellow needs it most. At the beginning of the year a fellow ought to pay a lot of attention to study, or else he gets in wrong and queers himself at the start. You take my advice, Kid, and let football alone. You say Cotting made you come out. That’s like old Cot, too. But if he hasn’t found out yet that he’s wasting his time on you, you tell him I say he is and that he’s to let you go. Wait until spring and try for baseball. You’re a pretty good baseball player for a young fellow, and you might make good there. But you stick to study this fall and winter. If you don’t you’ll have to answer to me when I see you, Rod. I’m not going to have you get through there and not learn anything. I’d like to get back east for some of the big games next month, especially our game with Yale and your game with Bursley. Hope you fellows wipe the earth with them. Give my best to Cotting and tell him he’s to come out here this winter and see me. Tell him I’ll show him a good time all right. Best to the Baron, too, and any of the others[166] that may remember me. Now, Kid, you do as I say and quit trying to play football. You’re not built for it in the first place, and then besides you haven’t the head for it. Cotting’s an ass to waste time on you, and I guess he’s doing it as a sort of favor to me. I wish he wouldn’t because it’s no good. You tell him I say so. Write and tell me how things are shaping, and send me a school paper once in a while. Here’s a fiver which may help out. Be good and work hard.
 
Yours,
 
Stan.
 
That letter sounded so much like Stanley that Rodney had only to close his eyes to get a mental picture of that big brother of his frowning over the paper as he set down all that virtuous advice. Rodney smiled as he read it over again and noted the lack of punctuation and the slovenly composition. The writing of English had never been one of Ginger’s accomplishments, and Rodney had often wondered how the former had managed to get through four years at school and a like term at college without showing any improvement in that art. But his smile disappeared as he finished the letter for the second time, and a frown took its place. On the whole he thought Stanley had a good deal of[167] cheek to write him that he was no good at football, or at any rate to be so cocksure of it. He guessed that Stanley had forgotten that he wasn’t much of a player himself until Mr. Cotting had taken hold of him. He thought that his big brother was a bit more conceited than he had suspected. That remark to the effect that Mr. Cotting was probably encouraging Rodney merely as a favor to Stanley indicated it.
 
“I’d just like to make good to show him that he doesn’t know it all,” muttered Rodney. “He seems to think he’s the only one in the family that’s good for anything. Maybe if Mr. Cotting takes as much trouble with me as they say he did with Stanley, I’ll do mighty nearly as well. Anyway I don’t intend to quit just because he says so. And I’ll tell him so, too!”
 
But by the time Rodney got around to answering that letter his annoyance had decreased to such an extent that he could write quite good-naturedly. “I don’t think he took me on just on your account,” he wrote. “They say here that he likes to get hold of fellows in the first year, catch them while they’re young, you[168] know, and nurse them along. That’s about what he did with you, isn’t it? Of course I don’t expect ever to be a wonder at football, but I like the game, and as long as Cotting wants to keep me on I’ll stay. Maybe, though, I’ll get fired before the season’s over. But they made the last cut the other day and I survived it. Everyone here seems to think I ought to know how to play just because I’m Ginger Merrill’s brother, and of course that is nonsense. Still I may learn in time. Anyway I’m having a lot of fun out of it so far. And a lot of work, too. Cotting’s a bear at making the fellows work. We’ve got an average team here this year, they say. Doyle is a dandy captain, and the fellows think a lot of him. So far we haven’t developed our attack much. Cotting has been hammering defence into us right along, and I think we’re pretty well developed that way. He’s teaching us a shift formation that’s a peach. I wish you might come on for the Bursley game, Stan. Can’t you do it? They’d make a regular hero of you, I guess. I wouldn’t wonder if the town would hang out flags and meet you with a brass band. Try to come,[169] please. I saw a lot of pictures of you in the gym awhile ago, groups, you know. Gee, but you were a funny little tyke, weren’t you?”
 
Rodney smiled maliciously as he wrote the latter sentence. He could imagine Stanley’s gasp as he perused that bit of cheek from his kid brother. You see Rodney’s awe of Stanley was fast disappearing.
 
He confided the tenor of Stanley’s letter to Tad, reading a few choice bits of it to that youth, and Tad was properly indignant and outraged. “What’s he think you are, anyway?” he demanded. “A babe in arms? I’d write back and tell him to chase himself around the block, I would! That’s the trouble with older brothers though,” he continued feelingly. “They’re all alike. I’ve got two and I know! They think a fellow can’t do anything on his own hook, and want to fill you up to the chin with their silly advice. You take it from me, Rod, it doesn’t do to humor ’em. You’ve got to sit on ’em hard just about so often. That’s the way I do. And say, you go ahead with your football and show Ginger that he isn’t the only fellow who can play the game. Why shucks, Rod, I’ll bet you[170] anything you’ll make his record look like a punctured tire by the time you’ve been here three more years!”
 
“No, I shan’t do that,” answered Rodney, “but I might make the team. And that would be something, wouldn’t it?”
 
“Open his eyes a bit, I guess,” replied Tad, with a chuckle. “Funny how your older brothers don’t seem to think it’s possible you can be any good at anything! You’d think they’d take it for granted that if you were their brother you’d be bound to be a wonder, if you see what I mean.” Tad paused to silently con his sentence. Rodney nodded his comprehension and Tad went on, relieved. “But they don’t. They think they’re all to the good themselves and that you’re a sort of idiot. Not flattering to them, I say. But they’re all proper fools.” He shrugged his shoulders hopelessly over the incomprehensibility of elder brothers, slipped a hand into Rodney’s arm, and led him down the steps. “Come on over and see what the twins are up to,” he suggested.
 
The twins were up to nothing, as it proved. They were frankly bored. As it was Sunday[171] afternoon, croquet was naturally an impossibility and they were seated on the porch, in a sunny angle, each with a book turned face down on her knees. They hailed the appearance of the two boys with all evidences of pleasure as the latter slipped through the hedge, but warning gestures of fingers to mouths cautioned the visitors to be quiet. Matty jumped off the porch and met them half way across the grass.
 
“Mama’s asleep in there,” she whispered hoarsely, pointing to a nearby lower window of the house, “so we mustn’t make any noise. Let’s go over to the summer-house.”
 
“Let’s take a walk,” said Tad as May joined them. “The summer-house is too near, and Rod’s such a noisy fellow he might wake your mother up.”
 
Matty observed her sister doubtfully. “Do you think she’d mind?” she asked.
 
“I don’t believe so. Not if we told Norah we were going and didn’t stay very long. I’d love to go. We’ve been just bored to death ever since dinner, haven’t we, Matty?”
 
“Bored stiff,” responded Matty inelegantly[172] and emphatically. “You run and tell Norah, May, please.”
 
A few minutes later they made their escape through the narrow gate and turned northward along Hill Street.
 
“You see,” confided May, “it was the dumplings.”
 
“What was the dumplings?” asked Rodney, perplexed.
 
“That made us bored. They always do. We’re very fond of them, and Norah gives them to us for Sunday dinner quite often. But she oughtn’t to, because they make us feel very bored.”
 
“Bored is a new name for it!” laughed Tad. “I’d call it indigestion!”
 
“Oh, but it really isn’t! At least, I don’t think it is. Do you, Matty?”
 
The blue-eyed twin gazed doubtfully into the distance and laid an inquiring hand on the front o............