“It must be as I wish,” Mr Stapley insisted. “We shall consent to no other arrangement. Doc, I’ll send the check to you to bank for your boy, and Donald, I want to thank you for your splendid action in this affair.” CHAPTER VI DISSENSION The end of the holiday week approached and on the day after New Year’s there would be again a general migration of eager youths, all over the broad land, into the outstretched arms of alma mater. But competing fiercely with all the institutions of learning, a mightier need beckoned the physically able, for there was work to do to make the “world safe for democracy.” Clement Stapley and Donald Richards heard the call and stopped to consider it. They knew old Brighton was ready to welcome back her knights of brain and brawn, but even more insistently they were aware that far greater institutions controlled by the United States Government were also eager to welcome the same brain and brawn. The Red Cross beckoned them, the Emergency Aid and the Y. M. C. A. wanted the help of strong and willing hands; bigger still loomed the Government itself, with its demands for men, but with a more urgent need. Surely Old Brighton could wait and so could their own desire for learning; at such a time as this the country, all the world indeed, blocked some of its wheels of progress to permit other wheels to turn the faster, to roll along helpfully, determinedly, to reach the hilltop of peace at the end of the fierce journey. Don sat down to the breakfast table on Monday morning with four younger boys, his brothers, all hungry and noisy. The mother of the Richards boys had long been dead; the aunt, their father’s maiden sister, who presided over the household, had departed a few minutes before upon some important errand, leaving the interior to the tender mercies of the wild bunch who seemed bent on having an especially merry time, for they believed the doctor had gone to attend an urgent case. Don was the only one of the group who appeared in no mood to raise a rumpus; he busily applied himself to satisfying his very healthy appetite and only switched off at necessary intervals in the attempt to enforce peace and to defend himself against the tussling twins, who would rather scrap than eat. The other two, one older and one younger, but almost the huskiest of the brothers, insisted on having a hand in these athletic performances. And then there came an unpleasant surprise.