Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/108

 here? Come to-morrow. Of course you can't play, but I'll teach you. I can teach anybody."

Neale blushed and accepted the magnificent offer.

"Well, ta, ta, old man, sorry you can't stay to supper."

Neale mounted his wheel with a very high heart. This was something like. Something was beginning to happen in his life. Wasn't Don great? As he rode home he decided that he would ask his father to let him go to Princeton. Don was at Princeton.

But he didn't. Father read him Mother's latest letter, all about the particular great-aunt she was visiting in Cambridge, and after they had commented on this, Father looked at his evening paper sideways as he ate, and Neale went over in his mind the events of the afternoon, and the wonder of Don Roberts turning out such a splendid fellow, such a good sport, such clothes, such a way with him. Neale thought about him a great deal more than about the girls, and with vastly more admiration. He was sure that David Copperfield's Steerforth was nothing to Don Roberts. Once when he glanced up, he saw Father looking at him instead of his newspaper.

"Well, Neale," he asked, "what are you up to these days?"

This was his opportunity, Neale knew it was, to introduce the subject of Princeton, but he could not think of any way to do it. Instead he said vaguely, "Oh, nothing much. Sort of hanging around." And then with a great effort, he brought out, for once, a vital piece of news, "I'm learning to play tennis."

"That's good," said Father. "It's a great game."

This seemed to be final. He looked back at his newspaper. But after a while, as though something had occurred to him he asked, "Who's teaching you? Where do you play?"

"I ran across Don Roberts, over in Nutley. They used to live here, on Central Avenue. He used to go to Number Two School." He wanted to go on and tell about Don's being in Princeton, but could not propel himself past the full-stop, where an inadvertent cadence of his voice had dropped him.

Next morning he found Don with a whitewash brush touching up the marking of the court. For three hours they