"No, they haven't; and even if they had, it would make no sort of difference. Money doesn't rule the world up here as it does down in New London. I am informed that some of the boys in that company are so poor that the others had to help them buy their uniforms."
"Humph!" said Tom. "Well, if that's the sort of trash they take into their company, I don't know that I care to belong to it, do you, boys? We don't have any thing to do with such fellows in the city."
"Couldn't we gradually weed them out?" asked Loren. "That's the way we did with our ball club, you know."
"Yes, and what was the consequence?" demanded his father. "You 'weeded out' your very best players, and you have been beaten by every club you have met since. Served you right, too."
"Well, I would rather be beaten than be chums with fellows who were too mean to chip in two or three dollars when we wanted to get up a dinner," observed Loren.
"They were not too mean; they couldn't do it. The two or three dollars that you speak of
