“Yes—that is, it’s Dad’s. Mine is a bit smaller.” Gerald smiled. “About a hundred and twenty-five feet shorter. We’ll try her after dinner. I asked Harry Merrow to go along. Don’t mind, do you?”
“Not a bit. I like Merrow, although I don’t know him very well. He spoke to me the other day after mathematics and we had a talk.”
“He’s a very decent kid. I suppose,” Gerald added with a laugh, “he’s only a year younger than I am, but he’s always seemed a lot younger to me.”
“I guess he’s about sixteen. You’re seventeen, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I’ll be eighteen next Fall when I get to Yale. I suppose that’s early enough, but I’d have made it this year if Dad hadn’t kept me on a diet of tutors for so long. It was funny the way I happened to go to Yardley. Jack was mixed up in it, weren’t you, old doggums?”
Jack, stretched on the stones at Gerald’s feet, thumped his tail affirmatively.
“How did it happen?” asked Kendall.
“Well, over there near where you came through the gate I used to have a playhouse when I was a kid. Once somebody gave me a fireman’s uniform as a present; you know, red blouse and helmet and a brass trumpet and so on. So one day I thought it would be a bright idea to have a real fire and do a rescue stunt. So I put on my fireman’s outfit, got an ax from the stable, shut Jack in the playhouse and set fire to it.”
“Thunder!” exclaimed Kendall.