While at Putnam Hall the three Rovers had become acquainted with three charming girls, Dora Stanhope and her cousins Nellie and Grace Laning. This acquaintance had ripened into loving intimacy, and when Dick went into business he had made Dora Stanhope his life-long partner. A short while after this Tom married Nellie Laning and Sam married Grace.
When first married, Dick and his beautiful wife Dora had begun housekeeping in a small apartment, but a few years later the three brothers had purchased a plot of ground on Riverside Drive, overlooking the Hudson river, and there they had built three handsome houses, Dick living in the middle house, and Tom on one side and Sam on the other.
Before the young people had moved into the new homes, Dick and Dora became the proud parents of a little son, who was named John, after Mr. Laning. The son was followed by a daughter, Martha, so named after her Great Aunt Martha of Valley Brook Farm, where the older boys had spent many of their youthful days. Little Jack, as he was called, was a bright lad with many of the qualities which had made his father so well liked and so successful in life.
About the time Jack's sister Martha was born, Tom and Nellie Rover came forward with twin boys, one of whom they named Anderson, after his grandfather, and the other Randolph, after Uncle Randolph, of Valley Brook Farm. Andy and Randy, as they were always called for short, were exceedingly clever and active lads, in this particular being a second edition of their father. Andy was usually saying things that were more or less funny, and Randy thought that playing some trick was the finest thing in the world.
"You can't find fault with those kids, Tom," Dick Rover said more than once. "They are chips off the old block."
"Well, I suppose they are," Tom Rover would reply, with a twinkle in his eye. "But if they never do anything that is really mean or harmful, I won't care."
About the same time the twins were born, Sam and Grace Rover came along with a beautiful little girl, whom they named Mary, after Mrs. Laning. Then, a year later, the girl was followed by a sturdy little boy, who was christened Fred, after Sam Rover's old school chum, Fred Garrison.
Living so close together—the three stone mansions on Riverside Drive were connected—the younger generation of Rover boys, as well as the girls, were brought up very much like one big family. The winters were spent in New York City, while during the summer the young folks were generally bundled off to Valley Brook Farm, where their grandfather, Anderson Rover, still resided with his brother Randolph and wife Martha.
At first both the girls and the boys had been sent to private schools in the metropolis. But the boys showed such a propensity for "cutting up," as Dick Rover expressed it, that the fathers were compelled to hold a consultation.
"The best thing we can do is to send them to some strict boarding school," was Dick Rover's comment, and in this the brothers agreed.