[CHAPTER VI]
Dissension
The end of the holiday week approached and on the day after New Year’s there would be again a general migration of eager youths, all over the broad land, into the outstretched arms of alma mater. But competing fiercely with all the institutions of learning, a mightier need beckoned the physically able, for there was work to do to make the “world safe for democracy.”
Clement Stapley and Donald Richards heard the call and stopped to consider it. They knew old Brighton was ready to welcome back her knights of brain and brawn, but even more insistently they were aware that far greater institutions controlled by the United States Government were also eager to welcome the same brain and brawn. The Red Cross beckoned them, the Emergency Aid and the Y. M. C. A. wanted the help of strong and willing hands; bigger still loomed the Government itself, with its demands for men, but with a more urgent need. Surely Old Brighton could wait and so could their own desire for learning; at such a time as this the country, all the world indeed, blocked some of its wheels of progress to permit other wheels to turn the faster, to roll along helpfully, determinedly, to reach the hilltop of peace at the end of the fierce journey.
Don sat down to the breakfast table on Monday morning with four younger boys, his brothers, all hungry and noisy. The mother of the Richards boys had long been dead; the aunt, their father’s maiden sister, who presided over the household, had departed a few minutes before upon some important errand, leaving the interior to the tender mercies of the wild bunch who seemed bent on having an especially merry time, for they believed the doctor had gone to attend an urgent case.
Don was the only one of the group who appeared in no mood to raise a rumpus; he busily applied himself to satisfying his very healthy appetite and only switched off at necessary intervals in the attempt to enforce peace and to defend himself against the tussling twins, who would rather scrap than eat. The other two, one older and one younger, but almost the huskiest of the brothers, insisted on having a hand in these athletic performances. And then there came an unpleasant surprise.
Jim and Jake, the twins, in an effort to compel the surrender of a buttered buckwheat cake, toppled over on Merrill, the second son, who in turn flung them against Ernest. That wily youngster was more than equal to such occasions; he dodged out of his chair and when the struggling twins tumbled across his seat he twisted the corner of the tablecloth about the neck of one, quickly wrecking things, as the wrestlers fell to the floor. Don made a wide grab at several things at once, but finding his attempt futile he turned, tore the tusslers apart and sent them sprawling to opposite corners; then he gave Ernest a crack with open hand, which caused that youngster being the baby of the family, to bawl loudly.
Just at that instant Dr. Richards hurriedly entered the room, for he had just been fixing his auto runabout and now came back for a bite to eat.
The sight that confronted the busy man was enough to exasperate a saint. He saw Donald in the midst of the mêlée and jumped at a too hasty conclusion. A man usually of few words, often over-lenient and generally just, he now, let his temper run away with his judgment and his tongue. Grabbing two dried buckwheat cakes that had, by merest chance, remained on the edge of the table, he turned back toward the door.