"Then how on earth can he play with the Riversides?" asked Rob. "Can’t we protest?"
"Oh, that’s all right enough. His uncle lives in Riverside, and he is staying with him for a while, so we can’t object to his playing."
"Humph!" growled Rob. "It’s a pity we can’t. We’ve got nobody to match him."
"I don’t think it’s a pity at all," returned Charlie cheerfully. "I’d a good deal rather see a crack player like Sam Massie, and get some points from him, than object to his playing, even if he gains the match for the other fellows. We’ll do our best to give him a good day’s work, any way. So let’s practise hard." And Charlie went off whistling.
There was an intense rivalry between the villages of Riverside and Heatherton in the matter of lacrosse. Each village had a good club, in which not only the players but the people also took a hearty interest, and the matches that were played once a month alternately in each village during the season never failed to draw out to see them everybody in the population that could possibly manage to be present. They were always played on Saturday, because then the farmers from round about came in to the village to do their week’s business early in the morning, and by rushing things a little could easily get through by three o’clock, and then they and the shopkeepers and the rest of the village folk would adjourn to the lacrosse-field and have a lively time of it, shouting, and cheering, and laughing as the game went on before them.
Charlie Kent and Rob M’Kenzie were the two youngest members of the Heatherton lacrosse twelve, and they naturally felt very proud of their position, which they had won by proving themselves the best players in the high school, and thereby attracting the attention of the Heatherton captain quite early in the season. The day when big Tom Brown called them both aside and invited them to play with the first twelve was one of the proudest in their lives; and Tom had had no reason to regret his invitation on any game that summer, for the two "young cubs," as he called them, proved themselves very useful additions, being quick, careful, plucky, and, best of all, thoroughly obedient, always doing exactly what he told them.
