“Nonsense!” said Dan. “I only got a couple of little burns on my leg and arm.”
“Who’s telling this story?” demanded Alf. “You dry up! Well, old John T. comes along with some of his servants and finds them and takes them up to the house and has them put to bed and gets the doctor for them. Whether he offered Dan half his kingdom I don’t know; Dan’s awfully tight with his details; but I’ll bet he could have had anything he’d wanted, say half a dozen steamships. John T. keeps him at his house until noon next day, sends word to Toby, that’s our Principal here, you know, that Dan’s made a jolly hero of himself and that he isn’t to be licked for staying away from school. Of course the kid’s grateful, too, and between them they come pretty near spoiling little Daniel; automobile rides, trips on John T’s big ocean yacht, dinners and luncheons and all the rest of it! Oh, Dan’s the whole works at Sound View!”
“Bully for you!” laughed Herbert Loring with a glance of admiration at Dan.
“But the best part of the story is to come,” said Alf. “Old Toby has always been eager to get John T. to send his son to school here; he’s been after the boy on the quiet for a couple of years; but John T. was afraid something might happen to little Gerald if he got up here with all us great rough rowdies—”
“Come now, Alf, that’s a whopper,” interrupted Dan warmly. “You can’t blame Mr. Pennimore, I think, for being soft over the boy. His wife’s dead and Gerald’s all he’s got to be fond of.”
“That and fifteen millions,” muttered Tom gravely.
“Well, anyhow, he wouldn’t think of it. Had a private tutor for Gerald and watched him every minute. Broadwood Academy wanted to get the kid, too, Herb. I guess that’s one reason Toby wanted him here; we always like to get ahead of Broadwood, you know. Well, to make a long story short, as they say, Dan has the cheek to tell John T. that if he wants to make a man out of his boy the only thing to do is to send him to Yardley. And John T. thinks it over awhile and finally agrees to do it if Dan will take Gerald to room with him and look after him; warm his milk for him and cover him up at night, and all that sort of thing, you know. And now the question before the meeting is; Who is the joke on?”
“I should say it was on Vinton,” laughed his brother. “I’m afraid you’re in for a hard time of it.”
“You ought to know better than to believe all Alf tells you,” replied Dan untroubledly. “Mr. Pennimore didn’t ask me to let Gerald room with me. That was my idea. My roommate had left school and I thought I might as well take Gerald in. He’s not a milksop at all, in spite of what Alf says. He’s been spoiled a bit, but a month or so here will knock all that out of him. Mr. Pennimore is as fine a man as I ever met and I’m mighty glad to do anything for him I can. I don’t propose to warm Gerald’s milk for him, as Alf puts it, but I intend to be decent to him and see that he has a fair chance. Lots of the fellows will be down on him at the start just because he is John T. Pennimore’s son. That isn’t fair. He can’t help it if his father is a millionaire. Lots of fellows here have fathers who have plenty of money, only they’ve never been talked about in the papers.”