"And I'm still a small-towner," said Wilbur, though delightedly. It was worth being a small-towner to have a brother so splendid.
"We must see a lot of each other from now on," insisted Merle. "We must get together this way every time I come back."
"We must," said Wilbur. "I hope we do, anyway," he added, reflecting that this would be one of those things too good to come true.
"What I don't understand," went on Merle, "you haven't had the advantages I have, not gone off to school or met lots of people, as I'm always doing, not seen the world, you know, but you seem so much older than I am. I guess you seem at least ten years older."
"Well, I don't know." Wilbur pondered this. "You do seem younger some way. Maybe a small town makes people old quicker, knocking round one the way I have, bumping up against things here and there. I don't know at all. Sharon Whipple says the whole world is made up mostly of small towns; if you know one through and through you come pretty near knowing the world. Maybe that's just his talk."
"Surly old beggar. Somehow I never hit it off well with him. Too sarcastic, thinking he's funny all the time; uncouth, too."
"Well, perhaps so." Wilbur was willing to let this go. He did not consider Sharon Whipple surly or uncouth or sarcastic, but he was not going to dispute with this curiously restored brother. "Try a brassy on that," he suggested, to drop the character of Sharon Whipple.
Merle tried the brassy, and they played out the hole. Merle made an eight.
"I should have had a six at most," he protested, "after that lovely long brassy shot."
Wilbur grinned.