OFF TO SCHOOL
Possibly you are wondering why two boys, each of whom was possessed of a
perfectly good home of his own, should select the Tannersville Public
Library as a place in which to converse. The answer is that Steve's
father and Tom's father were in the same line of trade, wholesale
lumber, and had a few years before fallen out over some business matter.
Since that time the two men had been at daggers drawn during office
hours and only coldly civil at other times. Steve was forbidden to set
foot in Tom's house and Tom was as strictly prohibited from entering
Steve's. Had the fathers had their way at the beginning of the quarrel
the boys would have ceased then and there to have anything to do with
each other. But they had been close friends ever since primary school
days and, while they reluctantly respected the dictum as to visiting at
each other's residences, they had firmly refused to give up the
friendship, and their fathers had finally been forced to sanction what
they could not prevent.
At the time this story opens, the quarrel between the two men, each a
prominent and well-to-do member of the community, still continued, but
its edge had been dulled by time. Both Mr. Edwards and Mr. Hall took
active parts in municipal affairs and so were forced to meet often and
to even serve together on various committees. They almost invariably
took opposite sides on every question, but they did not allow their
personal quarrel to interfere with their public duties.
The boys had at first found the condition of affairs very irksome, but
had eventually got used to it. It was hard not to be able to run in and
out of each other's houses as they had done when they had first known
each other, but there were plenty of opportunities to be together away
from home and they made the most of them and were well-nigh inseparable.
Mr. Edwards had declared, when announcing the fact in the preceding
spring, that Steve was to go to boarding school, that he was sending the
boy away to remove him from the questionable association of Tom Hall.
But Steve gave little credence to that statement, for he knew that
secretly his father thought very well of Tom. The real reason was that
Steve had not been making good progress at high school, owing
principally to the fact that he gave too much time to athletics and not
enough to study. Mr. Edwards concluded that at a boarding school Steve
would be under a stricter discipline and would profit by it. Steve's
mother had died many years before, and his father, while perfectly able
to command a large army of employees, was rather helpless when it came
to exercising a proper authority over one sixteen-year-old boy!
Naturally enough, Tom, when he had learned of his chum's impending
departure in the fall for boarding school, began a vigorous campaign to
secure parental permission to accompany him. Mrs. Hall had soon yielded,
but Mr. Hall had held out stubbornly until almost the last moment. "I
guess," he had said more than once, "you see enough of that Edwards boy
without going off to the same boarding school with him! If you want to
go to some other school I'll consider it, Tom, but I'm blessed if I'll
have you tagging after Steve Edwards the way you propose!" But in the
end he, too, capitulated, though with ill-grace, and for a week there
were not two busier persons in all Tannersville than Steve and Tom.
Steve had taken time by the forelock and had accumulated most of the
necessary outfit, but Tom had to attend to all his wants in six
weekdays, and there was much scurrying around the shops by the two
lads, much hurry and worry and bustle in the Hall mansion. You had to
take with you such a lot of silly truck, you see! Or, at least, that is
the way Tom put it. The catalogue informed them that they must provide
their own sheets, pillow-cases, spreads, towels, napkins and laundry
bags, as well as take with them a knife, fork and spoon each. Steve
sarcastically wondered if the school gave them beds to sleep in! The
situation was further complicated by the eleventh-hour discovery on the
part of Mrs. Hall that Tom's clothing, while quite good enough for
Tannersville, would never do for Brimfield Academy, and poor Tom had to
be fitted to new suits of clothes and shoes and hats and various other
articles of apparel.
They were to leave early Monday morning, for in that way they could
reach Brimfield before dark. Both boys, who had set their hearts on a
night in a sleeping-car, with all its exciting possibilities, begged to
be allowed to make their start Monday evening, which would allow them to
arrive at school Tuesday forenoon in plenty of time. But neither Steve's
father nor Tom's would listen to the suggestion.
"Then I'll get there a whole day before school opens," grumbled Tom,
"and have to stay there all alone Monday night."
"It won't hurt you a bit," replied Mr. Hall. "And the catalogue says
that students will be received any time after Monday noon. I'm not going
to have you two reckless youngsters travelling around the country
together at night."
Tom, recognising the inevitable, said no more.
There was a somewhat awkward ten minutes at the station, for both Mr.
Edwards and Mr. Hall, the latter accompanied by his wife, went down to
see the boys off. The men nodded coldly to each other and then the odd
situation of two boys who were to travel together side by side taking
leave of their parents at opposite ends of the same car developed.
Tannersville is not a large town and those who were on the platform that
morning when the New York express pulled in understood the dilemma and
smiled over it. Steve and Tom were both rather relieved when the
good-byes were over and the train was pulling out of the station.
"Blamed foolishness," muttered Steve as he met Tom where their bags were
piled on one of the seats.
"Yes, don't they make you tired?" agreed the other. "Say, how much did
you get?"
Steve thrust his fingers into a waistcoat pocket and drew out a
carefully folded and very crisp ten-dollar bill, and Tom whistled.
"I only got seven," he said; "five from father and two from mother. I
guess that will do, though. The only things we have to pay for are
dinner and getting across New York. Got your ticket safe?"
Ensued then a breathless, panicky minute while Steve searched pocket
after pocket for the envelope which contained his transportation to
Brimfield, New York. The perspiration began to stand out on his
forehead, his eyes grew large and round and his gaze set, Tom fidgetted
mightily and persons in nearby seats, sensing the tragedy, grinned in
heartless amusement. Then, at last, the precious envelope came to light
from the depths of the very first pocket in which he had searched and,
with sighs of vast relief, the two boys subsided into the seat. By that
time Tannersville was left behind and the great adventure had begun!
There are lots of worse things in life than starting off to school for
the first time when you have someone with you to share your pleasant
anticipations and direful forebodings. It is an exciting experience, I
can tell you! The feeling of being cast on your own resources is at once
blissfully uplifting and breathtakingly fearsome. Suppose they lost
their way in New York? Suppose they were robbed of their tickets or
their pocket money? You were always hearing about folks being robbed on
trains, while, as for New York, why, every fellow knew that it was
simply a den of iniquity! Or suppose the train was wrecked? It was Tom
who supplied most of these direful contingencies and Steve who
carelessly--or so it seemed--disposed of them.
"If we lost our way we'd ask a policeman," he said. "And if anyone
pinched our money or our tickets we'd just telegraph home to the folks
and wait until we heard from them."
"Where'd we wait?" asked Tom with great interest.
"Hotel."
"They wouldn't let us in unless we had money, would they?" Tom objected.
"Maybe we could find the United States consul."
"That's only when you're abroad," corrected Steve scathingly. "There
aren't any United States consuls in the United States, you silly chump!"
"I should think there ought to be," Tom replied uneasily. "What time do
we get to New York?"
"Two thirty-five, if we're on time. We ought to be. This is a peach of a
train; one of the best on the road. Bet you she's making a mile a minute
right now."
"Bet you she isn't!"
"Bet you she is! I'll ask the conductor."
That gentleman was approaching, and as they yielded their tickets to be
punched Steve put the question. The conductor leaned down and took a
glance at the flying landscape. "About forty-five miles an hour, I
guess. That fast enough for you, boys?"
"Sure," replied Tom. "But he said we were going a mile a minute."
"No, we don't make better than fifty anywhere. You in a hurry, are you?"
"Only for dinner," laughed Steve. "Where do we get dinner, sir?"
"There's a dining-car on now," was the reply. "Or you can get out at
Phillipsburg at twelve-twenty-three and get something at the lunch
counter. We stop there five minutes."
"Me for the dining-car," declared Steve when the conductor had moved on.
"What time is it now, I wonder."
It was only a very few minutes after eight, the discovery of which fact
occasioned both surprise and dismay. "Seems as though it ought to be
pretty nearly noon, doesn't it?" asked Tom.
"Yes. What time did you have breakfast? I had mine at half-past six."
"Me too. Let's go through the train and see if we can find some apples
or popcorn or something."
The trainboy was discovered in a corner of the smoking-car and they
purchased apples, chocolate caramels and salted peanuts, as well as two
humorous weeklies, and found a seat in the car and settled down to
business. They were both frightfully hungry, since excitement had
prevented full justice to breakfasts. It was horribly smoky in that car,
but Steve declared that he liked it, and Tom, although his eyes were
soon smarting painfully, pretended that he did too.
"I suppose we'll have to smoke at school," said Tom without enthusiasm.
Steve considered the question a moment. "I don't believe we will unless
we want to," he replied at last. "We can say it's because we're in
training, you know. They don't allow you to smoke when you're trying for
the football team or anything like that."
Tom sighed his relief. "It makes me horribly squirmy," he said. "I
thought, though, that if all the fellows did it, you know, I'd better,
too. In all the stories about boarding schools I've ever read, the
fellows smoke on the sly and get found out. Don't see much fun in that,
though, do you?"
"No." Steve devoured the last of his apple and started on the peanuts.
"I don't believe those stories very well, anyway. There's always a
goody-goody hero that gets suspected of something he didn't do and knows
who really did it all the time and won't tell. And then he saves another
fellow from drowning or something and it turns out that it was that
fellow who did it, you know, and he goes and fesses up to the principal
and the principal asks the hero's pardon in class and the captain of the
football team comes to him and begs him to play quarter-back or
something, which he does, and the school wins its big game because the
hero gets the ball and runs the length of the field with it and scores a
touchdown. I guess boarding school isn't really very much like that,
Tom. I guess there's a heap more hard work to it than those fellows who
write the stories tell you about. Anyway, we'll soon find out."
"Still, I guess some of those things do happen sometimes," said Tom a
trifle wistfully, unwilling to relinquish the story-book romance.
"Fellows do get wrongly accused of--of things, and they do rescue other
fellows from drowning--sometimes, and fellows do win football games. I'd
like to do that and be a hero!"
"Sure! So would I. Bet you, though, there won't be any of that kind of
stuff at Brimfield. I dare say we'll wish ourselves out of it long
before Christmas! If anyone wrongly accuses me of anything you can bet
I'll make a kick. You won't see me getting punished for what some other
fellow's done. That's all right in stories, but not for yours truly! Not
a bit of it, Tom!"