“You bet it is! We’re proud of Ginger Merrill here and if Ginger Merrill’s black cat or his skye terrier came here we’d want to know it. That’s why I introduced you to those chaps.”
“I don’t thank you,” returned Rodney, ungraciously. “And I’ve had enough of this. I’m going back.”
Tad, hands in pockets, watched Rodney’s back for a while with a puzzled frown on his face. Then he whistled expressively, shrugged his shoulders and turned again to watch practice.
Rodney, thoroughly angry at he didn’t quite know what, left the athletic field behind him, and instead of entering the back campus, as the ground containing the head master’s house and the gymnasium was called, turned to the right on Larch Street and wandered down it, kicking the dead leaves out of his path. He was heartily sick of hearing the name of that tiresome brother of his. If, he told himself savagely, anyone said ‘Ginger Merrill’ to him again to-day he’d—he’d strike them! The last thing he wanted to do was to join the football candidates, and here he was pledged to appear to-morrow afternoon for practice. And he didn’t even possess a pair of football trousers. He wished heartily he had kept away from the field.
He passed one intersecting street which, he knew, would take him back to Westcott’s, and kept on. He wasn’t ready for home yet. There would probably be fellows about and he wasn’t in the humor to talk to them. At the next corner progress ahead was closed to him, and having the choice of turning to left or right, he turned to the left. A block further on he realized that the street looked strangely familiar, a fact explained when he sighted a granite horseblock set at the edge of the sidewalk in front of a narrow gate in a lilac hedge.
“I hope,” he muttered, “I don’t run into those silly twins.” And then in the next instant he found himself hoping he would. Somehow he felt a desire to unbosom himself to someone sympathetic, and girls, even if they did hold strange views on a good many subjects, were sympathetic. So when he reached the gate he looked through, and there on the croquet lawn which he had traversed the other day were the objects of his thoughts. They didn’t see him and he stood for a moment and looked and listened.
“I’m very sure, just as sure as I can be, that you haven’t been through the middle wicket,” declared one of the twins—he hadn’t the faintest idea at that distance which twin she was!
“And I’m perfectly certain I have been,” declared the other with equal firmness. “I came across there after I sent you into the geranium bed and got in position for the side wicket——”
“And I came over here on my next shot. And then you went through the side wicket and your next shot took you over there——”
“And I went through the next turn!”