Ferdy flushed.  “I guess I do it about as often as you do.  I guess you struck my governor for a pretty big pile.”

Mr. Rhodes’s face hardened, and he fixed his eyes on him.  “If I do, I work for it honestly.  I don’t make an agreement to work, and then play ‘old soldier’ on him.”

“I guess you would if you didn’t have to work.”

“Well, I wouldn’t,” said Mr. Rhodes, firmly, “and I don’t want to hear any more about it.  If you won’t work, then I want you to let me work.”

Ferdy growled something under his breath about guessing that Mr. Rhodes was “working to get Miss Harriet Creamer and her pile”; but if Mr. Rhodes heard him he took no notice of it, and Ferdy turned back to the boy.

Meantime, Gordon had been calculating.  Five thousand dollars!  Why, it was a fortune!  It would have relieved his father, and maybe have saved the place.  In his amazement he almost forgot his anger with the boy who could speak of such a sum so lightly.

Ferdy gave him a keen glance.  “What are you so huffy about, Keith?” he demanded.  “I don’t see that it’s anything to you what I say about the place.  You don’t own it.  I guess a man has a right to say what he chooses of his own.”

Gordon wheeled on him with blazing eyes, then turned around and walked abruptly away.  He could scarcely keep back his tears.  The other boy watched him nonchalantly, and then turned to Mr. Rhodes, who was glowering over his papers.  “I’ll take him down a point or two.  He’s always blowing about his blamed old place as if he still owned it.  He’s worse than the old man, who is always blowing about ‘before the war’ and his grandfather and his old pictures.  I can buy better ancestors on Broadway for twenty dollars.”

Mr. Rhodes gathered up his papers and rose to his feet.

“You could not make yourself as good a descendant for a million,” he said, fastening his eye grimly on Ferdy.

“Oh, couldn’t I?  Well, I guess I could.  I guess I am about as good as he is, or you either.”

“Well, you can leave me out of the case,” said Mr. Rhodes, sharply.  “I will tell you that you are not as good as he, for he would never have said to you what you have said to him if your positions had been reversed.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“I don’t expect you do,” said Mr. Rhodes.  He stalked away.  “I can’t stand that boy.  He makes me sick,” he said to himself.  “If I hadn’t promised his governor to make him stick, I would shake him.”

Ferdy was still smarting under Mr. Rhodes’s biting sarcasm when the three came together again.  He meant to be even with Rhodes, and he watched his opportunity.

Rhodes was a connection of the Wentworths, and had been helped at college by Norman’s father, which Ferdy knew.  One of the handsomest girls in their set, Miss Louise Caldwell, was a cousin of Rhodes, and Norman was in love with her.  Ferdy, who could never see any one succeeding without wishing to supplant him, had of late begun to fancy himself in love with her also, but Mr. Rhodes, he knew, was Norman’s friend.  He also knew that Norman was Mr. Rhodes’s friend in a little affair which Mr. Rhodes was having with one of the leading belles of the town, Miss Harriet Creamer, the daughter of Nicholas Creamer of Creamer, Crustback & Company.