“His brother?” queried Stovebridge.
“Yes, Frank Merriwell. I ran up against him at Yale, and of all the straight-laced freaks he took the cake—wouldn’t drink, wouldn’t smoke; wouldn’t play poker, wouldn’t do anything but bone, and go in for athletics.”
“Humph!” remarked Stovebridge cynically. “I don’t wonder you didn’t like him. He wasn’t in your class at all. But if he was as good an athlete as his brother, he must have been some pumpkins. I don’t just see, though, how that accounts for your violent antipathy. Why didn’t you let him go on his benighted way and have nothing to do with him?”
Marston’s heavy brows contracted in a scowl.
“You don’t suppose I cared a hang what he did, do you?” he snarled. “That didn’t worry me any, but he had to get meddlesome and butt into my affairs. Got my best friend so crazy about him that he went and gave up cards and all that, and trained with Merriwell’s crowd. Of course, he was no use to me after that. Do you wonder that I dislike Frank Merriwell, and his brother as well?”
Stovebridge hesitated.
“Don’t know as I do?” he said in a preoccupied manner.
He had been thinking of something else.
They smoked for a few minutes in silence. Once or twice Marston glanced curiously at his friend, who was scowling at the floor.
“What’s the matter with you to-day, Brose?” he asked presently. “You act like you had something on your mind.”