But Larry and Tom showed no signs of enthusiasm.

Noticing their silence, their father exclaimed: 

“Don’t you boys want to go?  I never knew you so quiet before when a trip was mentioned.”

“But the ball game with Husted is on Saturday,” said Larry, giving voice to the thought uppermost in his mind.  Then, as though he realized that it was foolish to compare a trip to Scotland with a game of baseball, he added:  “Besides, Tom and I were planning—­that is, we were going to ask you if we couldn’t go out to Tolopah and spend the summer with Horace and Bill Wilder on their ranch.”

With this announcement of a plan which the brothers had discussed over and over, wondering how they could bring it about, the boys anxiously watched their father’s face.

“So that’s how the wind blows, eh?” he commented.  “Well, ma, what do you say?  Shall we take the boys with us or let them go to the ranch?”

With her quiet mother’s eye Mrs. Alden caught the appeal on her sons’ faces and after a short deliberation replied: 

“I think they’d be better off with the Wilders—­that is, if they’d like to have the boys visit them.”

“Hooray! hooray!” cried the boys together.

“We can telegraph and ask Mr. Wilder tonight,” said Larry.  “Can we go to Bramley and send the message, father?”

“You can telephone the message to the station and the operator will send it.”

And while the boys puzzled over the wording of the telegram, their father re-read his letter from Scotland.

“I’ve got the telegram ready,” Tom exclaimed presently.  “Listen.”  And picking up the piece of paper on which he had been scribbling he read: 

  “Bill and Horace Wilder,
    “Tolopah, New Mexico: 
  “We can leave Saturday to visit you.  Do you
  want us?  Answer quick.  Father and mother
  leave Friday for Scotland.  We’ll have to go,
  if you don’t want us. 
    “Larry and Tom Alden.”

“You might make it shorter,” chuckled the farmer.

“And muddle it all up so they wouldn’t understand it any better than you do your lawyer’s letter,” returned Larry.

“That’s a bull’s-eye,” grinned Joe, whose mind was running to shooting terms.

And as neither their father nor mother interposed any objections, the boys telephoned the message to the operator at Bramley, who promised to send it at once.

CHAPTER III

WORD FROM THE WEST

Anxiously the two brothers waited for some news from the West and in the meantime got ready for the trip to Scotland.

“Oh, I don’t want to go to Scotland!” sighed Tom.  “I want to go to the ranch.”

“Well, we’ve got to take what comes,” answered his brother.

The boys went down to town and said good-by to their school chums.  All were sorry they were going away and said they would be missed from the baseball team.