"What a filthy lie!" shrieked Harry when he reached this, making up in vehemence what he lacked in coherence. His alleged aversion to the wash-basin was a standing joke in the family, and any reference to it invariably brought a rise.
"Gracious, dear," murmured Aunt Agatha, and smiled.
"Let's hear," said his father, suspending judgment. (The scene took place at the breakfast table.) Harry read the letter aloud up to the point in question, and was relieved to observe an exculpatory smile on his father's lips when he stopped.
"I admit there is an implication in that last remark," said Hilary, "that might prove irritating. However, that's no excuse for making a menagerie of yourself. What else does James say?" Harry read on:
There always is a big rough-house the first two or three Saturday nights every year, and after that they keep pretty quiet. They say the masters let them do what they like, almost, those first nights, because they behave better afterwards and it keeps the new boys from being too fresh. That's what I'll be doing to you, you see, next year!
I have been playing football every day, and am trying for the fourth team. Do you remember Roswell Banks, that boy we saw up at Northeast? He is going to make the first team this year, probably. They say he tackles better than any one else here. Kid Leffingwell also plays a peach of a game, but he won't make the first this year. He is too light, but he has got lots of nerve.
I must stop now, so good-night.
Your affectionate brother,
James.
The present writer has no quarrel with any one who is unable to detect in this letter symptoms of any particularly keen brotherly affection. It is his private opinion, however, that such exist there. He thinks, imprimis, that James, strange as it may appear, laid himself out to be more agreeable in that letter than he would if he had written it, say, a year previously. It is longer and fuller than James' letters usually were. And—though this may be drawing the point too fine—he thinks that the exclamation point after "that's what I'll be doing to you next year" would not have been put in under the old régime. An exclamation point does so much toward toning down and softening a disagreeable remark! And for the manner of signature, of course James might have signed himself like that to Harry at any time of his life. Yet the writer, even at the risk of being called super-sensitive, will not ignore the fact that most of James' letters to his brother previous to this date are signed, more casually, "Yours affect'ly," or "Ever yours," or simply "Good-by,—James," and though he realizes that at best the point is not an all-important one, he feels he can do no better than give the reader all the information he has at his command, be it never so trifling, and let him draw conclusions for himself.
CHAPTER V
BABES IN THE WOOD
One Saturday morning about a year after James went away to school Harry bounded downstairs for breakfast to find his father just leaving the dining room.