CHAPTER IX.
NATURAL HISTORY.
Lester Brigham was not at all intimate with Don and Bert.

The brothers, as in duty bound, called upon him when he first arrived in the settlement, and a few days afterward Lester rode over and took dinner with them; and that was the last of their visiting.

The boys could see nothing to admire in one another.

Don and Bert were a little too "high-toned;" in other words, they were young gentlemen, and such fellows did not suit Lester, who preferred to associate with Bob Owens and a few others like him.

Lester had been a leader among his city schoolmates, and he expected to occupy the same position among the boys about Rochdale; but before he had been many weeks in the settlement he found that there were some fellows there who knew just as much as he did, who rode horses and wore clothes as good as his own, and who had some very decided opinions and were in the habit of thinking for themselves.