“Dear Merry: Cheese it! What do you take us for—a lot of chumps? We’re onto you! Eight thousand fiddlesticks! I’m going to have the check framed and hang it in my room. It will be a reminder of you.
“Say, that was tough about your fizzle in Puelbo! It came just when we were hoping, you know. The fellows have been gathering at the fence and talking about you and your return to college since Browning came back and told us how you were making a barrel of money with your play. Now the report of your disaster is spread broadcast, and we know you cannot come back. It’s tough.
“Diamond is in a blue funk. He hasn’t been half the man he was since you went away. Hasn’t seemed to care much of anything about studying or doing anything else, and, as a result, it is pretty certain he’ll be dropped a class.
“But Diamond is not the only one. You know Browning was dropped once. He is too lazy to study, but, in order to keep in your class, he might have pulled through had you been here. Now it is known for an almost certain thing that he will not be able to pass exams, and you know what that means.
“I’m not going to say anything about myself. It’s dull here. None of your friends took any interest in the college theatricals last winter, and the show was on the bum. The whole shooting match made a lot of guys of themselves.
“Baseball has been dead slow, so far this season. We are down in the mud, with Princeton crowing. It takes you, Merry, to twist the Tiger’s tail! What was the matter? Everything. All the pitchers could do for us was to toss ’em up and get batted out of the box. The new men were not in it. They had glass arms, and the old reliables had dead wings. It was pitiful! I can’t write any more about it.
“I’d like to see you, Frank! Would I? Ask me! Oh, say! don’t you think you can arrange it so you can come East this summer? Come and see me. Say, come and stay all summer with me at my home! We won’t do a thing but have a great time. Write to me and give me your promise you will come. Don’t you refuse me, old man.
“Yours till death,
“Rattles.
“Here’s another!” cried Frank. “If that doesn’t beat! Why, they all think those checks fakes!”