“Doing anything this afternoon, Tucker?”

George Tubb paused with a foot on the stairs to the third floor of Whitson and put the question with elaborate carelessness. Toby hesitated the fraction of a moment. He knew whither the inquiry led and he wanted to answer in the affirmative, but he really wasn’t doing anything special, and Arnold could never be counted on for Sunday afternoon entertainment, and so he said, after a scarcely noticeable pause: “Why, no, I guess not, Tubb.”

“Wondered if you’d care to take a walk somewhere,” continued the other, hurriedly. “It’s a corking day and—and everything.”

“All right. About three? I’ve got a letter to finish.”

“Any time.” Tubb’s tone held perfect indifference. Toby felt as if he had made the proposal himself and as if Tubb were doing him a favor! For an instant he was riled and had something tart on the end of his tongue. But he kept it there, and only said: “Three then. So long!”

Tubb’s feet pounded on up the stairs and Toby pushed open the door of Number 12. Inside, his slight frown vanished and he chuckled. “Silly chump!” he murmured. “Afraid I’d guess how much he wanted me to go with him. Gee, I wonder why! I’m never more than fairly decent to him. Must be my—my fatal beauty that attracts him!” And Toby’s chuckle grew into a laugh as he caught sight of his smiling but unclassic features in the mirror over Arnold’s dresser.

The trouble with writing letters after a Sunday dinner is that a Sunday dinner is likely to be a rather hearty affair, affecting not only the body with torpidity but the brain as well. So it was that while the first three pages of Toby’s weekly epistle were brilliant enough the last page fell off badly in interest. In fact, he only reached the bottom of it by desperate effort and by shortening the lines. Then, when he had thumped a stamp on the corner of the envelope and found cap and sweater, he clattered down and dropped the letter in the mail-box in front of Oxford. After that he backed away to the edge of the Prospect, as the grassy terrace in front of the buildings was called, fixed his gaze on the window of Number 31 and hailed.

“O Tubb! A-ay, Tubb!”

After several seconds had elapsed, Tubb’s face appeared in the open window and he looked down at Toby with simulated surprise. Then, as he looked, recollection dawned, and, “Oh! All right, Tucker! Be right down!” he called.

Toby kicked at a pebble. “Serve him right if I beat it,” he muttered vexedly. “Cheeky beggar! Still, he did it pretty well.” Unwilling admiration softened his rancor, and, “I’ll wait,” he added to himself.

Tubb clattered out of the entrance by the time that resolution of clemency had been reached and the two crossed the Prospect as if by mutual consent and took the graveled path that descended the terrace until it reached the winding road at the foot of the hill. Then, “Which way?” asked Toby.

“I don’t care,” answered Tubb. “It’s warmer along the beach, I guess. The wind’s sort of west to-day.”

“About northwest by north,” said Toby, to whom the direction of the wind and the look of the sky were matters of real interest. “It will be good and cold to-night, I guess.”

They crossed the road and went on by the path, over the deep cut through which the shining rails of the double tracks ran. Westward, they could follow the straight roadway to the Wissining station and the drawbridge beyond, eastward the railway vanished presently around a curve. A rod or two further on the path led into the woods, dividing, and they followed the right-hand trail. The oaks and beeches still held most of their leaves, but the other trees had stripped their branches for the winter, and underfoot the colorful litter rustled pleasantly. A moment later the Sound showed through the trees, softly blue in the afternoon sunlight. There wasn’t much talk until the two boys had reached the beach and turned eastward along the firm, hard sand. The tide was well out, and just above the little ripples of waves gleaming expanses of wet sand caught the sun blindingly. They by no means had the beach to themselves, for the mild afternoon had brought out many of the villagers and not a few of the school fellows, and, looking ahead down the gently-curving strand, they could see many darker specks against its golden surface. Out on the water a few pleasure craft were flitting under a light but steady breeze and Plum Island looked startlingly near.

“A peach of a day,” said Toby, breathing in the familiar scent of sea and shore, and experiencing a tiny qualm of homesickness. Tubb assented. He was looking fixedly at two boys who were approaching them along the beach. A moment later he grunted.

“There comes Frick,” he said. “Guess I’ll ask him something.”

“No, you won’t,” said Toby decisively. “You promised to behave yourself.”

“I didn’t promise,” denied Tubb. “I said maybe I’d—Anyhow, I’m not going to do anything; I just want to let him understand——”

“You keep your mouth closed, Tubb.” Toby took his arm tightly. “No nonsense now!”

“We-ell——” Tubb eyed the approaching couple irresolutely. Frick’s companion was a stranger to both, a chap whose name Toby believed to be Cotting, a tall, lanky youth with a wide mouth and outstanding ears. Just now he appeared to be intensely amused at something Frick was saying, and his high-pitched laughter, accompanied by surreptitious glances at Toby and George, was too much for the latter. Wresting his arm from Toby’s restraining clutch, Tubb swung off to meet the others, who were passing a dozen yards up the beach. Toby followed more slowly, thinking unflattering things of Tubb.

“Talking about me, were you?” challenged Tubb from a few paces away. Cotting shot a startled and questioning glance at Frick. Evidently Cotting had no desire for trouble. Frick, however, pushed forward swaggeringly.

“What if I was?” he demanded, scowling.

“Don’t do it!” Tubb’s voice had an unsuspected edge, and Frick stared an instant in surprise.

“Calm yourself, kid, calm yourself,” he laughed finally. “I talk about any one I like to. Then what?”

Toby “butted in” at that moment, nodding coldly to Frick and joining arms with Tubb again. “Come on, Tubb, let’s hurry,” he urged.

“That’s right, Tucker,” said Frick approvingly. “He might get hurt if he stays around here.”

Cotting had stopped a pace or two away and was digging a hole in the sand with the toe of one shoe in a very absorbed way. Toby found time to be amused at his tactful withdrawal.

“I’m not going to get hurt,” responded Tubb. “Don’t worry about me, Frick. And I’m not going to hurt you—to-day. I just stopped to tell you that I’m keeping my affair till later on. Didn’t want you to think you were getting away with what you did last week, because you’re not. It’s chalked up against you and you’ll get what’s coming to you when it’s time. There’s no hurry——”

“Shut up, Tubb,” begged Toby. “Come on!”

“Mind your own business, Tucker!” snarled Frick. “You’re a nice one to talk that stuff! I’ve got something for you, too, you swell-headed little carrot! As for you, Tubb, or whatever your silly name is, I’m ready whenever you are! Right now if you like! I’ll take on the two of you! Come on! What do you say?”

“There’s going to be no scrapping here,” said Toby resolutely. “There’s going to be none anywhere for awhile. You keep what you’ve got for me, Frick. I’ll ask for it when I’m ready. Tubb, you——”

“You’ll get it when I’m, ready!” growled Frick. “I’d give it to you now if——” He glanced over the beach and, furtively, toward the school, whose upper windows were visible above the stretch of woods.

“Yes, and get thrown out of school,” assented Toby grimly. “Not for me, thanks! There’s time enough. Come on, Tubb.”

“All right,” Tubb smiled cheerfully. “No use getting in trouble about this guy. See you again, Frick. Be good to yourself!”

“Yes, run along, little boys,” answered Frick, laughing angrily. “For a plugged nickel I’d bang your fool heads together!”

Toby tightened his hold on Tubb’s arm, but Tubb only laughed and went on. “Gee, that did me a lot of good,” he said contentedly. “He’s a big bluff, I guess, Tucker.”

“Maybe. Still, they say he’s pretty handy with his fists. Anyhow, I’m glad you’re out of that, Tubb. We’d all been finished for fair if you two had scrapped here on Sunday afternoon!”

“I forgot about its being Sunday,” said Tubb. “I suppose that would have made it worse. Say, he’s got it in for you, too, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, I guess so,” answered Toby tranquilly. “But I should feel faint! Anyhow, he will have to keep the peace until football’s over. I don’t intend to lose my place on the Second for the likes of him!”

“Say, why doesn’t that ninny take you over to the First?” asked Tubb.

“Meaning Mr. Lyle? You have pretty names for your Big Boss! Well, I’ve been thinking about that, Tubb, and I’ve just about concluded that it’s because he doesn’t want me!”

“But, joking aside,” protested the other earnestly, “you play a better game than that guy Clarke, and I’ll bet you could beat Noyes, too, if you had a chance. Noyes is scared all the time. He gets his signals all balled up. No one feels any—whatyoucallit—any—any——”

“You mean that he doesn’t inspire his team with confidence in his ability to—er—meet successfully the——”

“Say, what’s wrong with you?” demanded Tubb anxiously.

Toby chuckled. “That’s what comes of trying to make practical application of what I’ve learned in my English course. Just as soon as I try to speak the language correctly some one jumps on me! It’s no use!”

“I should say not!” agreed Tubb, relievedly. “You talk like an examination paper!”

“Then I’ll stop. Those are things I don’t want to think of. By the way, how are you getting along in your classes, Tubb?”

“Fine. I never had much trouble with studies. Guess I learn easily.”

“I think you must,” responded Toby thoughtfully. “Wish I did. Shall we turn back?”

“Do you mean that you have trouble with your studies, Tucker?” asked Tubb when they were retracing their steps. “I thought you were a regular shark for work.”

“A shark,” answered Toby, “is a much misunderstood fish. Most folks think that a shark swallows things whole, but he doesn’t. He has to bite off a chunk at a time, just as I do. Where we differ, Mister Shark and I, is on chewing. He doesn’t have to chew what he bites off, and I do. I have to chew it a long while. And even then it isn’t always digested. I guess, Tubb, the truth of the matter is that I can learn easily enough if I set out to do it, but I have a rotten fashion of trying to do two hours’ study in one!”

Tubb laughed. “I know. If the instructor’s easy you can get by that way sometimes, but here at Yardley you can’t. I found that out the first week. Well, I suppose we’ve got to learn the dreary stuff, eh? What’s the good of it, though? A lot of it, I mean?”

“Don’t know, Tubb. I’ve wondered. Seems to me sometimes that if they’d teach us less Greek and Latin and higher mathematics and more things like horseshoeing and plumbing and—and ditch-digging we’d have a better chance when we got through. A lot of us will never get to college. I hope to, but I don’t know. If I don’t, what use to me is Latin and trigonometry and Greek? I suppose I’ll build boats most of my life—maybe. Being able to read the Odyssey in the original odiousness isn’t going to help me a whole lot!”

“Well, there are schools where a fellow can go and learn those things,” said Tubb. “Blacksmithing and electricity and—and practical things, you know.”

“Yes, but why not teach a little of them at every school? Seems to me a lot of us would be a sight better off if we knew something about a practical trade when we got out of prep school. Of course, we couldn’t learn much, but we might have a start. I guess it’ll come to that some day, Tubb.”

“Really? Well, I wouldn’t mind. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get through here. Go home and tend store, I guess.”

“Store? What kind of a store is it?”

“Oh, just a regular general store like you find in small towns. Dad sells everything from sugar to plows. And he makes just enough to live on, I guess. He used to be in the lumber business, and he did pretty well for awhile. Then—something happened and it went bust. No, by jiminy, I won’t do it, Tucker! Running a country store isn’t good enough! I’ll be a—a lawyer or something first!”

“Sounds desperate the way you say it,” laughed Toby. “I’d sort of like to be a doctor myself, only you can’t be President if you’re a doctor, and of course I’d rather be President.”

“Can’t you?” asked Tubb innocently. “Why not?”

“Don’t know.” Toby shook his head. “You never heard of a President who’d been a doctor first, did you? Maybe there’s something in the Constitution prohibiting it.”

“You say the craziest things!” laughed Tubb. Then, soberly: “Do you mean that you really think about things like that, Tucker?” he asked.

“Things like what? Being a doctor?”

“No, being President. I never do.”

“Sure, why not? Some one’s got to be President, Tubb. Might as well be me if I’m fitted for it. Or you, if you are! Every President was a kid once, you know. I wonder if they ever thought about it when they were kids. Maybe you’re not supposed to. Anyway, if you’re a lawyer and I’m a doctor, you’ll get the presidency, because lawyers seem to have it all over every other profession when it comes to copping that job!”

Later, climbing the hill again, Toby asked: “Changed your mind any about this place, Tubb?”

“How do you mean?” But, in spite of assumed ignorance, he understood, and in the next breath he went on. “Yes, I have, Tucker,” he said frankly. “I said a lot of things I didn’t believe, anyhow. I had an awful grouch at first. Guess you—guess you must have thought I was a perfect blamed nuisance!”

“N-no, not exactly. You got me riled pretty often, though.”

“Did I? I suppose I must have. Well——” Tubb hesitated. “Say, I want you to know that I appreciate everything, Tucker; everything you did to make me—make me get onto myself. Of course I know that I’m not the sort of fellow that other fellows take to, but—but I’ve been—sort of—getting along lately. Football’s done it, I guess, and you started me on that. That’s why I say that I’d like you to know——”

“All right.” Toby chuckled. “Tubb, I decided a long while ago that when you got straightened out here I was going to do something to prove to my own satisfaction that—well, that you were a regular fellow.”

“What was it?” asked the other, puzzled.

“I was going to call you something,” answered Toby gravely. “I guess you have got straightened out pretty well and so I guess I’ll do it right now.” They had reached the second floor of Whitson and Toby had started toward Number 12. “See you later, Wash-Tub!”

Then his door closed behind him hurriedly. But George Tubb, continuing his way upstairs after a moment, looked anything but vengeful!