"O LIVER, bring me that ball!" said Roland Kenyon, in a tone of command.
The speaker, a boy of sixteen, stood on the lawn before a handsome country mansion. He had a bat in his hand, and had sent the ball far down the street. He was fashionably dressed, and evidently felt himself a personage of no small consequence.
The boy he addressed, Oliver Conrad, was his junior by a year—not so tall, but broader and more thick-set, with a frank, manly face, and an air of independence and self-reliance.He was returning home from school, and carried two books in his hand.
Oliver was naturally obliging, but there was something he did not like in the other's imperious tone, and his pride was touched.
"Are you speaking to me?" he demanded quietly.
"Of course I am. Is there any other Oliver about?"
"When you ask a favor, you had better be polite about it."
"Bother politeness! Go after that ball! Do you hear?" exclaimed Roland angrily.
Oliver eyed him calmly.
"Go for it yourself," he retorted. "I don't intend to run on your errands."