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“Piffle! All right, have your own stubborn way. You’ll miss a whole lot of fun, though.”

“And a whole lot of bruises! Anyway, Arn, one football hero is enough in a family. I’ll stay at home and cut surgeon’s plaster for you and keep your crutches handy and hear your alibis.”

“Idiot,” said Arnold. “Come on, dump that truck on the chair and let’s go over to Dudley. I want to hear some sensible conversation for a change.”

“You don’t mean you’re going to keep quiet all evening, do you?” asked Toby with concern.

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The school year began the next morning. Many new faces confronted Toby in the recitation rooms and some familiar ones were missing. Toby’s list of friends had not been a long one last year, although acquaintances had been many. It had been his first year at Yardley Hall, which fact, coupled with a fairly retiring disposition, had left him rather on the outside. It is always a handicap to enter school in a class below your friends, which is what Toby had done. Arnold and Frank, both a year older, had been in the Third, while Toby had gone into the Fourth. Consequently the fellows he had met through Arnold—Frank had not counted greatly as a friend last year—had few interests that were Toby’s. To be sure, in early spring, after he had made a success of hockey, things had been somewhat different. But even then he had remained a pretty insignificant person among the three hundred and odd that made up the student body of Yardley Hall School. Not that Toby cared or thought much about it. He was too busy getting through the year without calling on his father for further financial assistance to pay much attention to the gentle art of acquiring friends.