There were rowboats and canoes, and both Dick and his younger brother, Phil, had built up the muscles of their arms and backs pulling at the oar and paddle. But now the lake was frozen over from end to end by the week of cold weather before the holidays, and sailing and boating could not be enjoyed. There was plenty of skating, however, and Phil had an ice-boat, which he had constructed with his own hands.
Dick’s mother was a handsome, kind-faced lady, refined and sad in her manner, although her face could light up with a smile that was like a golden sunburst. She was very proud of her two boys, and of big, manly Dick in particular. He was so much like her husband as she had known him in his younger days. Yes, Dick was like him in many respects, yet she could see that he was finer-grained, for the old sailor had been somewhat blunt and bluff in his ways.
No wonder Dick was finer-grained, for it were impossible for him to be otherwise with such a mother. Her influence had been over him always, and she was to him the type of perfect womanhood. She liked to think of him as like her husband in his youthful days, and yet that thought brought to her sometimes one great fear.
Captain Starbright had been beset by one great weakness—his love for strong drink. All his life he had fought against it, but it had conquered him at last and cut short his days. The one great fear that haunted Dick’s mother was that some time her elder son might fall beneath the ban of intemperance; but from the time little Dick knelt at her knee to lisp his bedtime prayers she had sought to instil in his mind a loathing and repulsion for the demon of strong drink.
Phil Starbright regarded his brother as just about “the proper thing” in every way. Phil was slenderer and more like his mother, and Dick seemed to him a marvel of strength, courage, and energy. At school there had never been a fellow who could whip Dick, and whenever Phil was in trouble Dick could easily and readily be summoned to help him out.
Phil, also, was fitting for Yale. At Andover he had read with breathless interest the accounts of the Yale football-games in which Dick had taken part; and his pride swelled and grew when report after report told of the marvelous playing of the young freshman giant who was known as the protégé of Frank Merriwell.
Frank Merriwell! Phil had heard of him many times before Dick went to Yale; he had talked of him to Dick, and he had longed to see the most famous college man in the country. When Dick wrote to Phil, telling of his meeting with Merriwell and how kind Merriwell had been to him, the younger brother felt like turning somersaults and yelling with joy.
And then, just before the holidays, Phil received a letter, in which Dick said he had invited Merriwell and a number of his friends to spend a portion of the vacation at the Starbright home, which invitation had been accepted. Phil came near having a fit. At last he would see Frank Merriwell! The day that he had dreamed of was coming!
With a bounding, eager heart the Andover lad packed up and started for home, for he could get off a day sooner than Dick, and he wished to have everything ready to receive his brother’s guests in the proper manner.
Thus it came about that Merry, Browning, Ready, and Dashleigh were warmly welcomed at the fine old country place on Seneca Lake. And Phil’s heart ceased to beat for a moment when Frank Merriwell pressed his hand and said he was glad to know Dick’s brother.