"Anyway," he exclaimed, "he might have told me about your giving the whole flag, instead of letting me go around like a monkey, collecting pennies for nothing." "Very true, Penfield, he should have told you. Didn't he intimate to you in any way what I had done? Didn't he offer to show you his subscription blank containing my letter?" "Why--why, yes, I believe he did." "And you declined to look at it?" "Yes, I declined to look at it. I considered it none of my business. But he might have told me what was on it." "My dear grandson; this is a case in which the alertness of your school-fellow, added to your failure to keep an engagement and to grasp a situation, has led to your discomfiture. Let this be a lesson to you to be diligent, vigilant and forearmed. Only thus are great battles won." Again the colonel placed his glasses on the hook on the breast of his waistcoat, and resumed his activity in connection with his evening meal. It was plain that he considered the discussion at an end. CHAPTER III It was on an afternoon late in January that the flag was finally presented to the school. It was a day marked with fierce winds and flurries of snow, like a day in March. But the inclement weather did not prevent people from coming to the presentation exercises. The school room was full; even the aisles were filled, and more than one late-comer was turned away because there was no more room. Notwithstanding the fact that the Riverbeds were to have the lion's share of the honors of the occasion, and the further fact that resentment in the ranks of the Hilltops ran strong and deep, and doubly so since the outwitting of their leader, no attempt was made to block the program, or to interfere, in any way, with the success of the occasion. There were, indeed, some secret whisperings in a little group of which Elmer Cuddeback was the center; but, if any mischief was brewing, Pen did not know of it. Moreover, was it not Pen's grandfather who had given the flag, and who was to be the chief guest of the school, and was it not up to the Hilltops to see that he was treated with becoming courtesy? At any rate that was the "consensus of opinion" among them. Colonel Butler had prepared his presentation speech with great care. Twice he had read it aloud in his library to his grandson and to his daughter Millicent. His grandson had only favorable comment to make, but his daughter Millicent criticised it sharply. She said that it was twice too long, that it had too much "spread eagle" in it, and that it would be away over the heads of his audience anyway. So the colonel modified it somewhat; but, unfortunately, he neither made it simpler nor appreciably shorter.