om your brother about the Harvard
Freshman eleven?"

Carroll directed at Westby the quizzical look under which Irving had so
often suffered. But Westby did not flinch; he waited for Irving's
answer, with his embarrassed, appealing smile.

"I had a letter from him this morning," said Irving. "He writes that
there is a chance of their coming up here to play the School eleven; I
had asked him if that couldn't be arranged."

"Oh, really!" exclaimed Westby, in a tone of honest interest.

"When, Mr. Upton?" "Does he think they'll come?" "Does Lou Collingwood
know about it?"

"I guess he knows as much as I do." Irving tried to answer the flood of
questions. "He wrote officially to the captain at the same time that I
wrote to Lawrence. If they come at all, it will be about a week before
the St. John's game."

"When shall we know for sure?" asked Westby.

"It appears to be a question whether the Freshmen will choose to play us
or Lakeview School. They want to play whichever team seems the stronger,
and they're going to discuss the prospects and decide in a few days."

"I'm sure we're better than Lakeview," declared Blake. "You'll tell your
brother we are, won't you, Mr. Upton?"

"I'll tell him that I understand we have a very superior team," said
Irving. "I fancy he knows that it's as much as I can do to tell the
difference between a quarterback and a goal post."

"You will admit, then, that there was some reason for my not believing
you had a football brother, won't you, Mr. Upton?" Westby tried thus to
beat a not wholly inglorious retreat.

"Every reason--until it became a matter of doubting my word," said
Irving.

Westby crimsoned, and Irving felt that again he had been too severe with
him; the boy had been trying to convey an apology, without actually
making one; it might have been well to let him off.

But Irving reflected that the account was still far from even and that
perhaps this unwonted adversity might be good for Westby. Irving did not
realize quite how much teasing had been visited upon Westby in
consequence of his disastrous error, or how humiliated the boy had been
in his heart. For Westby was proud and vain and sensitive, accustomed to
leadership, unused to ridicule; for two days now the shafts of those
whom he had been in the habit of chaffing with impunity had been
rankling. Because of this sensitive condition, the final rebuke at the
luncheon table, before all the boys, cut him more deeply tha