DICK SOMES IS PERSONALLY CONDUCTED
I don’t think Dick tried very hard to win that race; at least, he
exhibited no superhuman efforts; and the result was that Harry Emery
won by several yards, finishing on one skate and trailing a blue
streamer from the other foot like a banner of victory. She subsided on
the edge of the boat-house porch, smiling and triumphant.
“I won!” she cried.
“Easily,” answered Dick placidly.
“I told you I could,” continued Harry.
“I said so too, didn’t I?”
“No, you said I couldn’t; you know you did.”
“Guess I was wrong then.” There was a moment’s silence during which
they each busied themselves with their skates. Presently Harry laid
hers beside her and looked up with a frown.
“No, you were right,” she sighed. “I guess you can beat me. You weren’t
trying just now. You’re like everybody else; you think because I’m a
girl I’m not worth bothering with.”
“Nonsense! You skate finely,” answered Dick earnestly. “Better than any
girl I ever saw.”
“Any girl!” echoed Harry scathingly. “That’s it! Girls can’t skate!
Why, there isn’t one at Madame Lambert’s who can keep up with me for a
minute. I can skate faster than any boy here, too!”
“Well, that’s doing pretty well, isn’t it?” asked Dick with a smile as
he tossed his skates down beside hers.
“I don’t like to be beaten--by any one,” grieved Harry.
“Then you mustn’t race with me.”
“Pshaw! You’d be polite and let me beat you--as you did just now. I--I
hate polite people!”
“No, I wouldn’t,” said Dick grimly. “When you race with me you’ve got
to go as hard as you know how, for I’ll beat you if I can. And if you
can’t stand being beaten you want to keep out of it, Miss Emery.”
Harry studied him a moment in silence.
“I guess nobody likes to be beaten,” she said finally; “but I can stand
it as well as the next fellow. What’s your name?”
“Somes, Dick Somes; Richard for long.”
“My name’s Harriet ‘for long,’” she laughed. “But nobody calls me
Harriet; it isn’t a very pretty name, is it?”
“Harriet? I don’t believe I ever heard it before. I was wondering how
you came to be named Harry. Harry suits you better, I guess.”
“How old are you, Dick?”
“Sixteen last August.”
“I’m fifteen. Wouldn’t you think I was older?” she asked anxiously.
“Heaps,” he laughed. “I thought you were about twenty.”
“I don’t like to be made fun of,” replied Harry.
“There’s a good deal you don’t like, isn’t there?” he asked with a grin.
“I sha’n’t like you if you talk like that,” she answered severely.
“Then I sha’n’t come to your old school.”
“It isn’t an ‘old school!’” flashed Harry. “And I don’t care whether
you come or not!”
“Oh, yes, you do,” he answered soothingly. “If I don’t come we won’t
have that race.”
“I don’t want to race you!”
“Oh, all right. Then it’s me for Hammond again. I guess it’s the better
school of the two, anyway.”
“I’m sure it’ll suit you better,” she answered angrily. Then she caught
sight of the merriment in his eyes, hesitated and laughed softly.
“You--you almost made me angry,” she declared.
“Almost, eh? Then you must be a terror, Miss Emery, when you go the
limit. Aren’t you going to show me around? It’s getting late and I’m
freezing to death.”
“Come on,” answered Harry. “You can leave your skates here; they’ll
be all right. And here’s your tie. I’m afraid, though, it’s kind of
frazzled and--oh, it’s torn! Look!”
“Don’t you care,” he said. “Here, I’ll carry your skates.”
“No,” she answered decisively, “I’ll carry them myself. I don’t like to
be waited on.”
“I guess if I came here to school,” laughed Dick, “it would take most
of my time finding out what you didn’t like. I wouldn’t have any time
for lessons.”
“Do you like to study?” Harry asked.
“Pretty well; everything but languages. Which way do we go? Up this
path?”
“Yes. Oh, I forgot. That’s the boat-house there. We have a crew and we
race Hammond every spring. Last year we were beaten.”
“I never saw a boat race,” said Dick. “It must be good sport.”
“It’s perfectly great,” said Harry, “and awfully exciting! This is the
Grove and the buildings are up the hill, only you can’t see them yet.
I’ll go ahead and show you the way.”
The path wound through a thick growth of trees, maples and oaks and
others, climbing steadily upward. Presently the trees thinned and
ceased and Dick followed his guide through a gap in a breast-high
hedge which, as Harry informed him, marked “inner bounds.” I have no
intention of recording the fund of information which Harry showered
upon Dick’s defenseless head. Needless to say that she colored her
remarks with the rose-tint of enthusiasm and drew a most alluring
picture of life at Ferry Hill. She rattled on breathlessly and
continuously after she had once become warmed up to her task and Dick’s
brain began to reel under the torrent of information.
He was shown Burgess Hall, with the dormitories and the dining-room,
School Hall, with its twilighted class rooms, the Cottage, where Harry
lived--Harry pointed out her room and described the furnishings
minutely, even to the pink paper on the walls--and the Gymnasium, which
was locked, and consequently remained a mystery for the present. Back
of the gym a gate in the hedge gave access to the Athletic Field, with
its snow-filled stands and gibbet-like goal-posts rising forlornly out
of the white waste. Harry said there was a running track there, but
Dick had to take her word for it. Then they retraced their steps and
Harry pointed out, at a distance, the stables and barns and the orchard
beyond.
“I’ll show you my menagerie some time,” she said. “It lives in the
barn. I’ve got a parrot, three lovely Angora kittens, a squirrel,
four guinea-pigs, six rabbits, lots and lots of white mice, heaps of
pigeons, and a dog.”
“Phew!” said Dick. “Is that all?”
“The dog’s name is Snip,” Harry continued. “He’s a fox terrier. Last
year I had two black rabbits and I called them Pete and Repeat, and
then there was a third and I had to call it Threepete. Isn’t that
silly?”
“I think it’s a pretty good name,” laughed Dick.
“Really? The parrot’s name is Methuselah; he’s awfully old, I guess,
but he’s a perfect dear. You’ll love Methuselah, Dick!”
“Maybe, but I don’t believe so. I don’t like parrots.”
“But he isn’t just--just an ordinary parrot,” said Harry earnestly.
“He’s awfully clever and wise; he knows heaps of things, really!”
“I like dogs and horses better,” answered Dick. “Have you got a horse?”
“No, there are two in the stable, but they don’t belong to me. Next
year, though, papa is going to get me a pony and a cart. Then I shall
drive to school every day.”
“Where’s your school?” Dick asked.
“Over there at Silver Cove. It’s a very nice school.”
They had reached the dormitory again and Dick stopped and looked about
him. It was getting dark rapidly and the campus, deep with snow,
looked bleak and forlorn. Even Harry had to acknowledge that fact to
herself and her hopes of inducing Dick to cast his lot with Ferry Hill
began to dwindle. Westward, above the tops of the trees which crowded
the slope, lay the frozen river, and beyond, on the farther bank, a few
yellow points of light marked the location of Coleville and Hammond
Academy.
“Of course,” ventured Harry, “things don’t look very nice now, but you
ought to see them when the trees are out and--and all.”
But her voice didn’t hold much conviction and Dick merely nodded his
head as he turned toward the path down the slope.
“Well, I’m much obliged for showing me around,” he said. “I’d better be
getting back.”
“Yes,” sighed Harry. “I--I’ll walk down to the river with you. You
might lose your way.” She didn’t have the courage to ask him whether
he liked Ferry Hill well enough to come there. She didn’t believe he
did. She wished he might have seen it in the morning when the sun was
shining warmly on the red brick walls and the sky was blue overhead.
She was disappointed. Dick seemed a rather nice sort, if somewhat
too--too self-assured, and it would have pleased Harry hugely to have
wrested a prospective student away from the rival school. Besides, the
sum of money which the advent of another student meant was not to be
sneered at; Ferry Hill’s expenses so nearly matched her income that
a half-year’s tuition and board might mean quite a little when the
accounts were balanced. Doctor Emery, as Harry well knew, had been
rather discouraged for the last two or three years. There was only the
one dormitory hall and forty-six boys filled it to overflowing, and for
that many students the expense was as great as it would be for twice
the number. The Doctor wanted a new dormitory, but didn’t know how he
was going to get it. With room for say twenty more students the school
would pay very well. As it was, it sometimes didn’t pay at all; there
were years when the books balanced the wrong way and the Doctor and his
family stayed at Ferry Hill all through the hot weather. Harry thought
of all this as she led the way down the hill through the dim grove,
and as a result what conversation ensued was somewhat spasmodic. At
the boat-house Dick busied himself with his skates and Harry looked on
silently; but finally:
“I don’t believe you had any idea of leaving Hammond, anyway,” she
exclaimed aggrievedly.
“Why not?” asked Dick.
“Because--because how could you, if your folks wanted you to go there--”
“My folks didn’t have much to do with it,” answered Dick, pulling his
gloves on. “There’s only my dad, anyway. He didn’t know anything about
the schools here and left it to his lawyer in New York. I said I didn’t
much care, and Mr. Warwick said he’d heard that Hammond was a very good
place, so after Dad sailed I came up here.”
“Is your father a sailor?” asked Harry.
“Oh, no,” laughed Dick, “he’s a mining man. He owns mines and buys
and sells them. My mother died a couple of years ago and we broke up
housekeeping and went moseying around, Dad and I. Then when he found
he’d have to go to London and Paris for two or three months he didn’t
know what to do with me. So I said I’d go to school somewhere in the
East; I’d never been very much, anyway. So that’s how it happened;
savvy?”
“Yes, but what’s ‘savvy’?” asked Harry.
“Oh, it means ‘Do you understand?’”
“Then if--if you did want to leave Hammond you could?” she asked. Dick
nodded.
“Sure as shooting! Why not? I told Dad I wouldn’t stay if I didn’t like
it, and he said in that case I could go back to Helena or join him in
London.”
“My!” exclaimed Harry. “Why don’t you go to London?”
“I’ve been there twice,” Dick answered.
“Then--then you--you’ll stay at Hammond?” asked Harry wistfully.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Dick. “Maybe.”
“And you didn’t like Ferry Hill?”
“Oh, yes, I did,” he answered stoutly. “It seems a mighty nice school.”
“But you won’t come?”
Dick hesitated, skating about backward and forward along the edge of
the ice and swinging his arms to keep warm.
“I don’t know,” he answered finally. “I’ll think it over. When does
school begin?”
“Day after to-morrow, but you’d have to get here to-morrow before six
in the evening.”
“Well, if I come--I’ll think about it anyway. And thanks for showing me
around. I’ve had a real jolly time. Good-night, Miss Emery.”
“Good-night,” answered Harry sadly. “I--I wish you’d decide to come.”
“Well, maybe I will,” he shouted back as he skated off. “But if I’m
not here by six to-morrow tell your father not to wait supper for me.
Good-night!” And laughing at his joke Dick Somes sped off into the
darkness across the frozen river.
Harry stood there shivering until she could no longer hear the ring of
his skates. Then she turned and went disappointedly back up the hill.