HOMESICKNESS AND GINGERBREAD
That afternoon Cal experienced his first and last touch of homesickness.
School began at half-past one and lasted until three-thirty. For Cal the
last half-hour was spent in the gymnasium, where he was introduced to
dumb-bells and chest-weights and taught to lie on his back on a mattress
and perform a number of interesting and picturesque――and, at first,
extremely difficult――exercises. Each class had three sessions a week in
the gymnasium. Cal followed the others into the dressing-room after the
class was dismissed and made the acquaintance of a shower-bath. He liked
that so much and stayed under it so long that he was one of the last
fellows to get dressed, and when he reached the Green Ned and all the
other West House boys had disappeared. They were not very far away, as
it happened, having only strolled down to the athletic field below the
gymnasium. But Cal didn’t know that. Nor was he likely to discover it,
since the gymnasium hid the field from sight. He stood around for a few
minutes, hoping that someone he knew would appear, and at last crossed
the road and returned to West House. So far there had been no time to
feel lonesome, but now that sensation began to envelop him. At the
bridge he stopped and leaned over the railing and let his gaze wander
around the little lake. It came to him suddenly that he ought not to
have come to Oak Park; that he wasn’t like the other boys; that he
couldn’t dress well enough, was rough and uncultivated beside them, and
that they would never like him. Why, even his roommate was ashamed of
the clothes he wore! He took his elbows from the rustic railing and went
on along the path.
Even Claire Parker was better fitted for these surroundings than he
was. Claire had been abroad four times, had lived in the city and knew
a hundred little things which, not vastly important in themselves,
combined to give him an ease of manner and a conversational ability
that Cal was certain he sadly lacked. No one, he reflected, ever cared
to talk to him. And when he was with the others all he could do was to
sit silent and listen to their chatter, and wonder more than half the
time what it was about! Gee, he wished he had never come! He wished he
were back in West Bayport this minute.
The house was silent and deserted when he reached it and slowly climbed
the stairs to the Den. The bay windows were open and the afternoon
sunlight slanted in warmly under the half-drawn shades. He tossed Ned’s
cap aside, dumped his new books on the table and seated himself on the
window-seat and gazed across the afternoon landscape. He felt pretty
dejected. He cal’lated he was the only fellow in school who wasn’t
having a jolly good time at that moment. Ned Brent knew about everybody
and didn’t need him a bit. Even Claire had made friends with one or
two of the younger chaps; Cal had seen him with them before afternoon
school. No one wanted to know him, though; no one cared whether he was
lonely and homesick! He had half a mind to pack some things in his bag
and walk back to the town and take the first train toward home!
But at that moment a door opened downstairs and an eloquent odor of
cooking came up to him, an odor that brought to him a sudden picture of
the little kitchen at home and his mother peering anxiously into the
oven. Steps sounded on the stairs and he heard Mrs. Linn puffing her
way up.
“Boys,” she called. But there was no answer. Cal heard her knock on the
doors at the back of the house and then come along the corridor. His
own door was almost closed and he hoped that she would be satisfied to
leave him in peace with his sorrow if he made no reply to her knock.
But she wasn’t. She pushed the door wide open and saw him at the
window. And she guessed instantly what the trouble was.
“Why, John, you all alone?” she asked in simulated surprise. “Aren’t
you feeling well?”
“Yes’m, thank you.”
“I suppose you’re sort of tired after your first day here. Well, here’s
something that will make you feel lots better.” She came in and set a
great plate of smoking-hot gingerbread on the table. “I don’t believe
you ought to eat quite all that yourself, but perhaps it won’t hurt
you.” She rolled her arms under her apron and looked across at him
kindly. “I suppose your mother makes gingerbread, don’t she?”
“Yes’m,” replied Cal, looking interestedly at the pile of red-brown
cake.
“Then of course you like it. What is it the boys call you? Cal, is it?
Well, I shall call you Cal too after this. Somehow I never could seem
to resist the nicknames; they’re so much easier to remember, aren’t
they? Why, I just have to stop and think when I want to remember Spud’s
real name, or Dutch’s. Now, don’t let it get cold. It’s a great deal
better when it’s hot. Maybe you’d like a glass of milk with it. Would
you?”
“No’m, thanks. I――I ain’t hungry.”
“Ain’t hungry! Sakes alive, what sort of a boy are you? Why, of course
you’re hungry, though maybe you don’t know it. Here, you try that nice
crusty corner piece and tell me whether it’s as good as your mother’s.”
She held the plate out and after a moment’s hesitation Cal obeyed.
Somehow, as soon as he had sunk his teeth in the gingerbread his
troubles looked much dimmer. Mrs. Linn seated herself in a chair and
beamed across at him while he ate, having first thoughtfully deposited
the plate beside him on the window-seat.
“You live by the ocean, don’t you?” she asked. “That’s what I’d like
to do. I’m that fond of the ocean! I was at Old Orchard Beach for
three weeks this summer and it was just heavenly. Seems as though I
could just sit on the sand all day long and look at the waves and be
perfectly happy! Is there a beach where you live, Cal?”
“Yes’m, two fine beaches.” And once started, Cal had a lot to say about
West Bayport and the surrounding coast, and Mrs. Linn let him talk to
his heart’s content, occasionally throwing in a question or dropping an
interested “I want to know!” And while he talked the gingerbread on the
plate grew less and less. Finally Mrs. Linn declared that she must go
back to the kitchen.
“I’ll leave the rest of that for Ned,” she said. “But you mustn’t let
the others know about it or there won’t be any for supper.”
“No’m. Thank you very much. It’s awfully nice gingerbread; just like my
mother makes. I――I like lots of molasses in it, don’t you?”
“Molasses is just the making of gingerbread,” asseverated Mrs. Linn.
“Molasses and spices. You’ve got to be particular about the spices
too.”
“Yes’m, I cal’late you have.” He remembered that he had observed the
other boys rise when Mrs. Linn entered or left the room and so he got
up rather awkwardly from the window-seat and stood while she bustled
out. It was funny, he reflected, how that gingerbread had altered the
outlook. Oak Park didn’t seem nearly so bad now and he thought that
perhaps, after all, he might be able to stick it out. He mustn’t expect
to make friends the first day. And ten minutes later there was a sound
of noisy footsteps on the porch, and a wild rush up the stairs and Ned
and Spud burst into the room.
“Where did you get to?” demanded Ned, throwing his cap at Cal and
subsiding on his bed. “I looked everywhere for you. Spud said he’d
seen you coming over this way, but I didn’t believe him. Spud’s such a
cheerful liar, you know.”
“You’ll believe me next time,” said Spud resignedly. “Hello, what do
I smell?” He sniffed the air knowingly. “Smells like――” But Ned had
already sighted the gingerbread and fallen upon it.
“Where’d this come from?” he asked with a full mouth. “Marm bring it
up? No wonder you sneaked home, you foxy rascal! Spud, he’s making love
to Marm already.”
“Gee, but it’s good!” said Spud, munching hungrily. “You didn’t leave
much, Cal, did you?”
“I’m sorry. I――I didn’t think.”
“Don’t worry,” laughed Ned. “If you’d been Spud you wouldn’t have left
any.”
“Huh! I’d like to know who fed you on perfectly good marshmallows last
night,” said Spud indignantly.
“Were those yours?” asked Ned innocently. “If I’d known that I’d eaten
more of ’em.”
“More! You couldn’t. You ate about half of them as it was.”
“Come on,” said Ned, when the last crumb had disappeared. “Let’s go
down on the porch. It’s too hot up here. What time is it, anyway?”
He looked at the gold watch he carried at the end of a handsome fob.
“Quarter past five. Is that all? My, but I’m hungry. I hoped it was
near supper time. I wonder if we could get Marm to let us have a few
more hunks of the heavy sweet, Spud?”
“We could try,” beamed Spud. “Come on.”
For once, though, the matron resisted their blandishments and Ned and
Spud sought the porch dejectedly.
“How did you get on today, Cal?” asked Ned.
“All right, I cal’late. It don’t look like it would be very hard,” he
added cautiously.
“It’s awful,” sighed Spud. “You simply have to wear your young life
out in study. If it wasn’t that I want to go to college mighty bad I’d
throw up the grind and be a pirate. Did you ever see a pirate, Cal?”
“No,” was the laughing reply.
“Well, I thought maybe you had. Aren’t there any pirates at West
Something――Bayport, is it?”
“I never saw any. But there’s a man there who was in a fight with
pirates once.” And Cal told about Old Captain Macon, one of the town
characters, who, in addition to having led a highly picturesque
existence as a young man, was possessed of an equally picturesque
imagination as an old one. By ones and twos the other West House
fellows came wandering home and joined the group on the porch. The
conversation turned on school affairs and soon Cal was listening to a
fervid discussion of the chances of the House Football Team to beat
the Hall that Autumn. If Sandy was to be believed things were in a
fearfully bad shape and the future held nothing but gloom. But Cal
had already reached the conclusion that Sandy’s position as head of
the House had developed an overwrought sense of responsibility and a
pessimistic attitude toward life. Dutch, on the other hand, saw only
certain victory ahead.
“The Hall hasn’t the ghost of a show this year,” he declared
emphatically. “We’ve got the men to do them up brown. Cal, you don’t
want to forget to report for practice tomorrow afternoon right after
school.”
“Wish they’d let us play outside teams,” sighed Hoop.
“Don’t they?” asked Cal in surprise.
Hoop shook his head. “Not football. They say it’s too dangerous. Don’t
see much difference, myself. Naughton bust his silly old collar-bone
last year tackling the dummy. I dare say he’d have gone through four or
five outside games without getting a scratch.”
“But you play other things with other schools?” asked Cal.
“Yes,” answered Sandy. “Baseball and hockey and such. I think Faculty’s
right about it, Hoop.”
“I know you do,” replied Hoop disdainfully. “You think anything Faculty
does is all right.”
“No, I don’t, but I do think they’re right about football. Why, some of
the big colleges have cut it out! And look at the way they’re trying to
make the game over!”
“Yes, they make me tired,” said Dutch. “Every year they change the
rules so you never know where you are. First thing we know we’ll be
playing football with bean-bags in the drawing-room of an evening, with
ice-cream and angel cake between halves!”
“Sounds good to me,” said Ned. “That would be quite like cricket,
wouldn’t it?”
“Guess Faculty would like to have us play cricket instead,” said
The Fungus disgustedly. “Fellow Wests, I am opposed to a paternal
government.”
“Whatever that is,” said Spud. “Fungus has been studying politics,
fellows.”
“Glad he’s studying something,” murmured Ned. “Speaking of study――”
“Oh, let’s not,” groaned Spud. “Let’s speak of supper. It’s most time
for it. Come on up, Sandy, and wash your dirty face.”
“Everybody wash his dirty face,” cried Hoop, jumping up. “Last man
upstairs gives me his preserves!”
There was a wild exodus from the porch and a frenzied rush up the
stairway, followed by a stiff argument between Hoop and Dutch, the
latter, who had been the last to reach the top, declaring that he had
not subscribed to the terms of the contest, and that if he had he could
easily have beaten Hoop.
After supper――and never, Cal thought, had he been so hungry――there was
almost an hour of leisure. There was a doubles in tennis on the court
at the side of the house between Sandy and Hoop and Ned and The Fungus,
and the others watched from the porch. At eight o’clock study hour
began and lasted until nine. Cal spread his books out on his side of
the table and Ned closed the door. It was a rule that during study
hour doors must be closed and no visiting was allowed. Then Ned drew
his chair up to his side of the table, fixed the drop-light with
mathematical precision in the center of the left end of the green cloth
and――took up a story-book! Cal viewed him in surprise.
“Aren’t you going to study?” he asked.
“No. What’s the use? I looked lessons over this afternoon. Besides, no
one is really expected to know much the second day. Want a good book?
Ever read this?”
Cal hadn’t, but he resisted the temptation to examine the picture which
Ned held forth for his inspection. “I cal’late I’d better study this
French a little. I never had much luck with French.”
“Me either,” said Ned with a shrug of his shoulders. “It’s a foolish
language and oughtn’t to be encouraged.” He leaned his elbows on the
table-top and was soon absorbed in his book. Cal studied religiously
until Sandy put his head out of his door and cried:
“Time up, fellows!”
Then followed a pleasant hour before bedtime. Cal and Ned went to the
Ice Chest, where Sandy and Spud dwelt, and the rest of the House joined
them there. The evening ended in a grand rough-house up and down the
corridor and in and out of the rooms, and Cal, wielding a pillow in
the thick of the fight, quite forgot that he had ever been either
lonesome or homesick.