Page:Stanwood Pier--Crashaw brothers.djvu/244

222 you, mother.” Then his eyes twinkled across at his father and he said, “But have n’t you  a single word for Edward, either of you?”

At that moment Blanchard in the crowd of onlookers shouted, “Now then, St. John’s and St. Timothy’s both together, three times  three for the Crashaw brothers! One, two, three!”

Out the crowd came with it joyously, nine rahs and then—“Crashaw brothers!”

That was almost the best thing that had ever happened to them, the two boys thought. Perhaps there was one thing that day that they liked better; that was at the railway station  when their father said, just before bidding  them good-bye,—

“You boys have gone away to rival schools and fought each other, and it seems to me  it’s only made you care the more for each  other. I’m proud of you both. I don’t know which is the better boy—or which is the  better school.”