“You never had any. Why not forget it and call quits? You put one over on Dick the day you came up in the carriage with him, didn’t you?”
“Oh, that was nothing. Purely impromptu, Sid. What I want now is something—something grand and magnificent, something worth while! Can you think of anything?”
“No, and if I could I wouldn’t. You let Dick alone until he’s through football. Your old tricks will only get his mind off his work.”
“Think so? I wouldn’t want to worry him, Sid. My idea is only to amuse him, to provide diversion.” Blash was silent a moment and Sid, eyeing him doubtfully, stretched a tentative hand toward his book. But Blash wasn’t talked out yet. He chuckled. “Stan told me something funny about Dick yesterday,” he announced. “It seems that he’s a bit of a hero back home and his high school paper has been copying everything about him it could find in The Leader and playing it up hard. Now his father is writing to ask him if he doesn’t do anything here besides play football and is threatening to take him out of school!”
“Get out!” Sid looked incredulous. “That’s just one of Stan’s yarns.”
“Honest to coconuts, Sid! And Dick’s terribly worried and is afraid the old man will learn that he’s been taken into the Banjo and Mandolin Club. Say if his father hears that, he’ll disown him!”
Sid laughed. “Must be a cranky old codger! Most fathers would be rather proud, I guess. I recall that mine slipped me a twenty-dollar check when I wrote home that I’d been elected baseball captain!”
“Well, that’s different,” said Blash gently. “You see, he’d never expected much from you, Sid, and the surprise momentarily unnerved him. And I suppose that by the time he’d pulled himself together again and tried to stop payment on that check you had it cashed.”
“I sure did,” laughed Sid. “And spent, too, most of it!”
“I think I remember the occasion. Well, I’ve been sort of dallying with the notion that there might be a chance to get a rise out of Dick in connection with his father’s—er—attitude. I don’t just see my way clear yet, but—there’s an idea floating around at the back of my brain——”