THE PENNANTCHAPTER ION SIX TOWN POND
THE PENNANT
“Have you tried the fishing this summer?”
“No; I’ve been too busy on the farm. This is the first day I have had when I could get away.”
“It looks like rain. Is that the reason why you’ve dropped the shovel and the hoe?”
“Partly. It’s more though, for the two dollars a day you’ve agreed to pay me for rowing you over the pond. I can’t pick that up on the farm, you know.”
“You’ll soon be a rich man if you don’t look out. Ever thought what you’d do with all your money?”
“Yes; I’ve thought a good lot about it. Perhaps ‘thinking’ about it is as far as I’ll ever get with it.”
“How are you going to invest it?”
“I’d like to get enough to help me go to school.”
Walter Borden sat quietly erect in the stern of the rude skiff in which he was seated, lazily holding a rod in his hands from which a long line was paid out in the hope that some stray pickerel in Six Town Pond might be tempted by the bait displayed.
A half-hour before the time when the conversation recorded above had taken place he and his companion, Dan Richards, had driven seven miles from the home of Walter’s grandfather, for the day, which was to be devoted to fishing in the pond, that extended three miles in length and in places was a mile or more wide. The little body of water was well known in the region for the fish which were said to be found in its depths, and Walter was convinced that the reports were not exaggerated, for in numerous summers preceding the one when this story opens he had tested the fact with varying degrees of success.
Every summer Walter came from his home in New York to spend at least a part of his vacation on the farm of his Grandfather Sprague. The broad acres, the great roomy barns, the cattle and horses, the deep brook that sped swiftly through the pasture, even the old-fashioned farmhouse with its garret and its broad piazzas, to say nothing of the many low rooms with their numerous windows, had every one a place dear to Walter’s heart. From his earliest recollections, here was the place where his summer days had been passed. So eager was he to come, that when he was only ten years old hisfather and mother had yielded to his pleadings and seen him safely entrusted to the conductor and porter of the sleeping-car, and alone he had gone on the journey of three hundred miles to Rodman, the little village a half-mile distant from Grandfather Sprague’s home. It is true this is the form which Walter took to describe the place, although an ordinary observer would have said that the Sprague farm was half a mile from the village.
Later in the summer Mrs. Borden came to join her boy and pay her annual visit to her father and mother. Her words of wonderment, when she arrived, at the change in her boy’s appearance since he had left home did not vary much from year to year. The tanned cheeks, the firmer muscles, the keen appetite, that made Grandfather Sprague shake his head as the cook’s johnny-cakes disappeared twice a day almost as silently as the dew from the shaded lawn, were an annual delight to Mrs. Borden.
“Beats all how much a boy can hold,” Grandfather Sprague daily would say as he watched the hungry lad.
Those days were gone now, for Walter Borden was a well-grown muscular boy of sixteen. “I haven’t a doubt that I can put you on the bed yet,” laughed his grandfather, his eyes twinkling as he spoke.
“You’d better not try it,” laughed Walter’s mother, glancing in pride at her boy.
“Come on, grandfather,” Walter would call out laughingly; “try it!”
“‘Try it’!” retorted Grandfather Sprague. “I’m not going to ‘try’ it; I’m going to do it!”
“When?” laughed Walter.
“One time is as good as another.”
“Do it now! Do it now!” retorted the lad.
“You’re nothing but a little whipper-snapper. You don’t weigh more than a hundred and fifty.”
“How much do you weigh, grandfather?”
“Two hundred and ten.”
“All right. You have the advantage in weight. I’ll not count it though, if you’ll put me on the bed.”
“Don’t try it, pa,” spoke up Grandmother Sprague. “You might slip and break your leg.”
“Or hurt his pride,” laughed Walter, whose love and respect for his grandfather were almost as keen as was the old man’s love for the stalwart lad.
“Pooh, ma,” the old gentleman retorted a trifle testily. “You don’t suppose I’m so old I can’t take my own grandson across my lap and spank him as he deserves, do you?”
“You might if he would lie still,” replied Mrs. Sprague dryly. “But you and I were born on the same day and so I know just how old you are. You are seventy-seven——”
“And almost as spry as ever I was,” broke in her husband. “I don’t feel a day older than when I was forty. The only thing that troubles me any is that I stub my toe more than I used to.”
“You take my advice and don’t bother with Walter.”
“Well, to please you, ma, I’ll give him a day of grace. But I give you fair warning,” he would add turning to the laughing boy, “that to-morrow at ten-thirty I shall give you what you deserve.”
“To-morrow at ten-thirty,” brought a daily repetition of the scene and conversation and not yet had Grandfather Sprague found just the time for displaying his prowess. His deep love for Walter was a source of joy to his grandson, who almost revered his portly, jolly, devout grandfather. His happiest days were those spent on the farm, and next to them were the visits of his grandfather and grandmother to the city.
According to Grandfather Sprague, all the members of the family were in a conspiracy to “spoil the boy,” that is, all except himself. He was for letting the boy know his proper place. But if anyone had ever heard of Grandfather Sprague refusing a request of Walter, or failing to be the first to herald his success in school or on the athletic field, he had held his peace so successfully that none had ever heard his testimony.
Every spot and creature on the farm were known to Walter. He had tramped in the woods, fished in the brooks, ridden the horses, driven the cows from the pasture to the barns—in fact, in former years the only moments when he had not been busy had been those when his tired little body was asleep.The collie and the horse which had been given him brought Walter’s life a little more closely into touch with animate things, but his chief interest aside from his grandfather’s place was in Dan Richards, who lived with his widowed mother and his brother Tom—a year and a half older than Dan—on the little farm adjoining.
Dan’s skill in making whistles of the willows, his unusual strength, his quiet bearing had appealed strongly to Walter in other days. Even now, when both were older and Dan’s lack of money was as marked as was Walter’s freedom in its use and disregard of its true value, there was a similar feeling of regard in Walter’s heart. The dark eyes, the tall form, the quiet unassuming ways of Dan were still almost as strong in their appeal to Walter as were the undoubted possession of physical strength and skill which were Dan’s. The quiet manner in which Dan had accepted his friend’s offer to pay him for rowing on the pond had deceived Walter completely. His blue eyes, his light-brown hair, his well-knit muscular body—“stocky” Dan called him, were not in sharper contrast to Dan’s physical characteristics than were their differences in mind and temper. The offer to “employ” his old friend had meant little to Walter. How much of an effort it had been for Dan to accept he never for a moment even suspected. Even his expression of surprise when he looked up hastily, as Dan explained how he hoped to invest his earnings,did not have in it one glance of understanding. Dan and the little “Rockland Farm,” which, with the best of care, provided only a scanty living for its owners, were almost inseparable in Walter’s mind. That Dan had ambitions beyond the limits of his farm or even beyond the little village of Rodman had not once occurred to Walter.
“School, Dan?” he exclaimed in surprise as he looked at his companion.
“Yes,” replied Dan quietly, without glancing at the fisherman.
“What put that into your head?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of a fellow wanting to get an education?”
“Why yes, of course,” said Walter, “but I hadn’t thought——”
“Of me in that connection?” suggested Dan as his friend hesitated.
“I don’t know why I shouldn’t think of it,” said Walter hastily.
“But the fact is you hadn’t?”
“Yes, I suppose so. What are your plans?”
“I don’t know that I have any very definite ‘plans,’ as you call them. Last year there was a young fellow from college that taught our school. I guess he put it into my head. He seemed to be interested, and gave me some lessons every night after I had finished my chores.”
“In what?”
“Oh, in algebra and Latin.”
“And you have been working on them?”
“A little. I had to be busy on the farm all day, and nights were the only times I had free.”
“Where do you plan to go?”
“I had been thinking some of going to the Normal School at Jericho. That’s only forty miles from here. It won’t cost very much there, you know. If I can get a little money ahead, I’m going to try it anyhow,” Dan said quietly.
“Going on to college?”
“I should like to. The hardest thing is to leave my mother and Tom to run the farm. They need me and I don’t know that they really can get along without me.”
“Don’t they want you to go?”
“Yes. Mother says she’ll sell or mortgage the farm and go with me, if Tom will go too. She’d get a few rooms and perhaps take a few boarders and help us that way.”
“Your mother is all right.”
“Don’t I know that?”
“You ought to, if any one does——”
“You’ve got a strike,” broke in Dan quietly. “Better pay attention to your fishing, that is, if you want to get any fish.”
Conversation ceased as Walter sharply yanked his rod. “The fish got away!” he exclaimed with chagrin a minute later.
“Of course,” said Dan dryly. “What did you expect? You pulled the hook right out of hismouth. You don’t think a pickerel will hang on with his fins and tail, do you?”
“Show me how, Dan,” said Walter humbly. “I believe I’ve forgotten how to do it.”
“No, you haven’t. You never knew how, so you haven’t forgotten. Hold on! You’ve got another strike! Hand me your rod and I’ll try to show you how to handle a strike.”