“I’m not, either! You just pull back like a balky mule!”
“While you’re pulling just as hard the other way.”
“You’ll be sorry some day and call yourself seven kinds of a fool! It isn’t every day in the week a fellow gets the chance to turn down such an offer as you’ve got.”
“Don’t you suppose I know that?” asked Dan softly, as he became aware that his disappointed friend was becoming angry.
“You’ll be sorry when it’s too late, I’m afraid.”
“That may be true.”
“It will be true! It is true! I simply can’t understand how any fellow can be such a fool as to throw over a chance to go to the Tait School, especially when the chances are that he’ll be the pitcher on the school nine. And, Dan,” Walter continued eagerly, “there hasn’t been a pitcher on the Tait School team who hasn’t been a varsity pitcher after he entered college. There’s Moulton, for example—oh, I’m not going to say anything more about it. If you could only see the Tait School just once you’d be perfectly willing for your old normal school to go to the hayseeds where it belongs. You think it over. I’ll see you again sometime. I’m going back to my grandfather’s now.”
As Walter turned away abruptly, and without once looking behind him, he was not aware that Dan remained standing in the place where the conversation had taken place and was ruefully watching his friend as he walked rapidly back to the old bridge.
“Well, Walter, what did Dan say when you told him what your father was going to do for him?” inquired Mrs. Borden cheerily as her boy entered his grandfather’s house.
“He said he wouldn’t do it,” replied Walter somewhat tartly.