It was awfully nice to have Sidney home again. Tom didn’t realise until now how much he had really missed him. And Mrs. Morris, too; and Mr. Morris to a lesser extent. They were all three sunburned and healthy-looking and very glad to be back once more. Mr. Morris left the carriage at his office and the others went out to Alameda Avenue together, Sidney rattling off a history of the summer with sparkling eyes, appealing to his mother every other minute for confirmation. In a lapse of Sidney’s chatter, Mrs. Morris told Tom how disappointed they had been when he had written that he could not visit them. “Sidney felt so badly,” she said, “that he immediately went out and tried to drown himself!” Sidney grinned. “The canoe went over,” he explained. “I was only about two or three hundred feet from shore and Mumsie was on the porch and she wouldn’t come out for me!” “But what did you do?” questioned Tom with wide eyes. “Oh, I sat on the end of the overturned canoe and worked in with my feet. I’d lost the paddle. The trouble was there was a breeze off shore and it took me nearly half an hour to get back. And Mumsie just sat there and watched me!” “But weren’t you frightened?” asked Tom, turning bewilderedly to Mrs. Morris. “Oh, no; I knew he could swim if he had to. And I thought it would teach him a lesson and make him more careful.” She laughed that little soft laugh of hers. “Sid was _so_ angry when he got back that his teeth chattered!” “I guess your teeth would have chattered if you’d had to sit on the bottom of that canoe for half an hour with the wind blowing on you?” Sidney grumbled. “I call it a mean trick, don’t you, Tom?” “I think----” Tom hesitated, casting a doubtful glance at Mrs. Morris. “Well?” she demanded, her eyes dancing. “I think,” he went on boldly, “it must have been terribly hard for your mother to stay on the porch!” “It was, Tom,” she confessed. “I’m afraid I’d never have done for a Spartan mother!” They wanted Tom to stay and have luncheon with them, but he had to refuse and hurry back to the store, promising, however, to return for dinner. That was a very merry affair, that first dinner at home, and Mr. Morris, usually somewhat grave and abstracted, was so jovial and flippant that Tom quite lost his awe of him. Afterward the boys adjourned to Sidney’s room and had a regular “talkfest,” as Sidney called it. Of course Tom had to tell about the game with Lynton and Sidney heard it with dancing eyes and wished at intervals he had been there. “Think of you pitching against those fellows!” he exclaimed. “Why, they must have had pretty near their regular line-up, didn’t they? Say, I guess Thorny is right.” “About what?” asked Tom. “About your giving up that job and playing on the team in the spring. Why, we’ve just got to have you, Tom! Farrar can’t pitch for a cent and he’s too stuck-up to take advice. We need you, Tom, and that’s all there is to it!”