CHAPTER II
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.