“I’d just like to make good to show him that he doesn’t know it all,” muttered Rodney. “He seems to think he’s the only one in the family that’s good for anything. Maybe if Mr. Cotting takes as much trouble with me as they say he did with Stanley, I’ll do mighty nearly as well. Anyway I don’t intend to quit just because he says so. And I’ll tell him so, too!”
But by the time Rodney got around to answering that letter his annoyance had decreased to such an extent that he could write quite good-naturedly. “I don’t think he took me on just on your account,” he wrote. “They say here that he likes to get hold of fellows in the first year, catch them while they’re young, you know, and nurse them along. That’s about what he did with you, isn’t it? Of course I don’t expect ever to be a wonder at football, but I like the game, and as long as Cotting wants to keep me on I’ll stay. Maybe, though, I’ll get fired before the season’s over. But they made the last cut the other day and I survived it. Everyone here seems to think I ought to know how to play just because I’m Ginger Merrill’s brother, and of course that is nonsense. Still I may learn in time. Anyway I’m having a lot of fun out of it so far. And a lot of work, too. Cotting’s a bear at making the fellows work. We’ve got an average team here this year, they say. Doyle is a dandy captain, and the fellows think a lot of him. So far we haven’t developed our attack much. Cotting has been hammering defence into us right along, and I think we’re pretty well developed that way. He’s teaching us a shift formation that’s a peach. I wish you might come on for the Bursley game, Stan. Can’t you do it? They’d make a regular hero of you, I guess. I wouldn’t wonder if the town would hang out flags and meet you with a brass band. Try to come, please. I saw a lot of pictures of you in the gym awhile ago, groups, you know. Gee, but you were a funny little tyke, weren’t you?”
Rodney smiled maliciously as he wrote the latter sentence. He could imagine Stanley’s gasp as he perused that bit of cheek from his kid brother. You see Rodney’s awe of Stanley was fast disappearing.
He confided the tenor of Stanley’s letter to Tad, reading a few choice bits of it to that youth, and Tad was properly indignant and outraged. “What’s he think you are, anyway?” he demanded. “A babe in arms? I’d write back and tell him to chase himself around the block, I would! That’s the trouble with older brothers though,” he continued feelingly. “They’re all alike. I’ve got two and I know! They think a fellow can’t do anything on his own hook, and want to fill you up to the chin with their silly advice. You take it from me, Rod, it doesn’t do to humor ’em. You’ve got to sit on ’em hard just about so often. That’s the way I do. And say, you go ahead with your football and show Ginger that he isn’t the only fellow who can play the game. Why shucks, Rod, I’ll bet you anything you’ll make his record look like a punctured tire by the time you’ve been here three more years!”
“No, I shan’t do that,” answered Rodney, “but I might make the team. And that would be something, wouldn’t it?”
“Open his eyes a bit, I guess,” replied Tad, with a chuckle. “Funny how your older brothers don’t seem to think it’s possible you can be any good at anything! You’d think they’d take it for granted that if you were their brother you’d be bound to be a wonder, if you see what I mean.” Tad paused to silently con his sentence. Rodney nodded his comprehension and Tad went on, relieved. “But they don’t. They think they’re all to the good themselves and that you’re a sort of idiot. Not flattering to them, I say. But they’re all proper fools.” He shrugged his shoulders hopelessly over the incomprehensibility of elder brothers, slipped a hand into Rodney’s arm, and led him down the steps. “Come on over and see what the twins are up to,” he suggested.
The twins were up to nothing, as it proved. They were frankly bored. As it was Sunday afternoon, croquet was naturally an impossibility and they were seated on the porch, in a sunny angle, each with a book turned face down on her knees. They hailed the appearance of the two boys with all evidences of pleasure as the latter slipped through the hedge, but warning gestures of fingers to mouths cautioned the visitors to be quiet. Matty jumped off the porch and met them half way across the grass.
“Mama’s asleep in there,” she whispered hoarsely, pointing to a nearby lower window of the house, “so we mustn’t make any noise. Let’s go over to the summer-house.”
“Let’s take a walk,” said Tad as May joined them. “The summer-house is too near, and Rod’s such a noisy fellow he might wake your mother up.”
Matty observed her sister doubtfully. “Do you think she’d mind?” she asked.