“You’re an awful liar, Rod!” he exclaimed.
“I didn’t lie,” replied Rodney calmly. “I didn’t say Ginger wasn’t my brother. You asked if we were related, and I just asked if I looked like him.”
“Well, you let me think so,” grumbled Tad.
“What if I did?” asked Rodney cheerfully. “That isn’t lying, is it? If I didn’t care to own up to it, that’s my business, isn’t it?”
“Well, I don’t see why you’re ashamed of it. Gee, if Ginger Merrill was my brother I’d be strutting around and clapping my wings and crowing all over the shop!”
“Oh, no you wouldn’t,” laughed the other. “Besides, you see what’s happened. I knew that would be the way of it if they found out.”
“What has happened?” asked Tad.
“Why they think I can play, and they’re making me try it. I can’t play, and they’ll find it out, and then they won’t have any use for me at all.”
“How do you know you can’t play?” asked Tad. “Why Cotting can make a football player out of—out of a piece of cheese!”
“Thanks! I’m not a piece of cheese, though. It would take fifty Cottings to make a football player out of me, Mudge. And besides that I don’t want to play football!”