The Crimson Sweater Part 3

"Mine's Harry--I mean Harriet Emery; they call me Harry. Harriet's a beast of a name, isn't it?"

Roy hesitated, somewhat taken back.

"Oh, you needn't mind being polite," continued the girl. "I hate polite people--I mean the kind that say things they don't mean just to be nice to you. Harriet is a beast of a name; I don't care if I was named for Aunt Harriet Beverly. I hate it, don't you? Oh, I forgot! You're one of the polite sort!"

"No, I'm not," answered Roy, laughing. "I don't like Harriet any better than you do. But I like Harry."

"Do you?" she asked eagerly. "Honest? Hope to die?"

"Hope to die," echoed Roy gravely.

"Then you may call me Harry."

"Thanks. Is Doctor Emery your father?"

"Yes. Only they don't call him Doctor Emery--the boys, I mean."

"Don't they? What do they call him?"

"Emmy," answered Harry with a giggle. "It's such a funny name for papa!

And mamma they call 'Mrs. Em.'"

"And they call you Harry?" said Roy for want of something better to say.

Harry's head went up on the instant and her blue eyes flashed.

"You'd better believe they don't! That is, not many of them. They call me _Miss_ Harry."

"Oh, excuse me," Roy apologized. "_Miss_ Harry."

Harry hesitated. Then,

"Those that I like call me Harry," she said. "And you--you rescued the baby. So--you may call me Harry, without the Miss, you know."

"I'll try to deserve the honor," replied Roy very gravely.

Harry observed him suspiciously.

"There you go being polite and nasty," she said crossly. Then, with a sudden change of manner, she advanced toward him with one very brown and somewhat dirty little hand stretched forth and a ludicrous smirk on her face. "I forgot you were a new boy," she said. "I hope your stay with us will be both pleasant and profitable."

Roy accepted the proffered hand bewilderedly.

"There," she said, with a little shake of her shoulders and a quick abandonment of the funny stilted tone and manner, "there, that's done.

Mamma makes me do that, you know. It's awfully silly, isn't it?"

Methuselah, who, during the conversation, had remained perched silently on the girl's shoulder, now decided to take part in the proceedings.

"Well, I never did!" he exclaimed hoa.r.s.ely. "Can't you be quiet? Naughty Poll! Stop your swearing! Stop your swearing!"

This resulted in his banishment, Roy, at Harry's request, returning the borrowed box to its place, and the parrot being placed therein with strict injunctions to remain there.

"Doesn't he ever get away?" asked Roy.

"Oh, yes, sometimes. Once he got into the stable and went to sleep on the head of John's bed. John's the gardener, you know. And when he came in and saw Methuselah sitting there he thought it was an evil spirit and didn't stop running until he reached the cottage. My, he was scared!"

And Harry giggled mischievously at the recollection.

Then Roy was formally introduced to the numerous residents of the enclosure. Snip, a fox terrier, had already made friends. Lady Grey, a maltese Angora cat, who lay curled up contentedly in one of the lower tier of boxes, received Roy's caresses with well-bred condescension.

Joe, one of her kittens, and a brother of the disgraced Spot, showed more interest and clawed Roy's hand in quite a friendly way. In other boxes were a squirrel called "Teety," two white guinea pigs, a family of rabbits, six white mice and a bantam hen who resented Roy's advent with a very sharp beak. And all about fluttered grey pigeons and white pigeons, fan-tails and pouters and many more the names of which Roy quickly forgot. And while the exhibition was going on Roy observed the exhibitor with not a little interest.

Harriet--begging her pardon! Harry--Emery was fourteen years old, fairly tall for her age, not overburdened with flesh and somewhat of a tomboy.

Considering the fact that she had been born and had lived all her short life at a boys' school the latter fact is not unnatural. I might almost say that she had been a trifle spoiled. That, however, would be rather unkind, for it was just that little spice of spoiling that had made Harry so natural and unaffected. The boys called Harry "a good fellow,"

and to Harry no praise could have been sweeter. As might have been expected, she had grown up with a fondness for boys' sports and interests, and could skate as well if not better than any pupil Ferry Hill had ever known, could play tennis well, could handle a pair of oars knowingly and wasn't _very_ much afraid of a swiftly-thrown baseball.

Her muscles were hard and illness was something she had long since forgotten about. But in spite of her addiction for boys' ways there was still a good deal of the girl about her, and she was capable of a dozen different emotions in as many minutes.

Roy decided that she was rather pretty. Her hair was luridly red, but many persons would have called it beautiful. Her eyes were very blue and had a way of looking at you that was almost disconcerting in its frank directness. Her face was brown with sunburn, but there was color in the cheeks. A short, somewhat pugnacious little nose, not guiltless of freckles, went well with the red-lipped, mischievous mouth beneath. For the rest, Harry was a wholesome, lovable little minx with the kindest heart that ever beat under a mussy white shirt-waist and the quickest temper that ever went with red hair.

Roy's examination of his new acquaintance was suddenly interrupted by the subject, who swung around upon him with an expression of great severity.

"Do you know," she asked, "that the boys aren't allowed in here without permission and that if papa finds it out you'll be punished?"

Roy shook his head in bewilderment.

"And," continued Harry impressively, "that John is coming along the lane, and that if he sees you here he'll have to report you, and--"

"What shall I do?" asked Roy, looking about for an avenue of escape.

"Why," said Harry, laughing enjoyably at his discomfiture, "just stay where you are. I'm the one who gives permission!"

CHAPTER III

A MIDNIGHT HAZING

After the lights were out that night Roy lay for quite a while in his bed in the Senior Dormitory reviewing the day. He was tired as a result of the football practice and he had a lame tendon in his left leg which he believed he had sustained in his flying leap onto the hedge when going to the relief of Angel, and which bothered him a little now that he had stopped using it. But his weariness and soreness hadn't kept him from eating an enormous dinner in the Dining Hall down stairs, any more than it was going to keep him from going to sleep in a few minutes.

During dinner he had begun to feel at home. He had found himself at Mr.

Cobb's table, which later on would be weeded out to make room for the football players, and had sat next to Captain Rogers, who had spoken to him several times quite affably, but not about football. The other fellows, too, had shown a disposition to accept him as one of them, if we omit Horace Burlen and Otto Ferris, and by the time Roy had sc.r.a.ped the last morsel of pudding from his dish he had commenced to think that life at Ferry Hill might turn out to be "both pleasant and profitable,"

as Harry had phrased it. After dinner he had spent the better part of an hour in the study room on the first floor composing a letter home. That finished, he had wandered down to the river and had been mildly rebuked by Mr. Buckman, an instructor, for going out of bounds after eight o'clock. There had been prayers at nine in the two dormitories and after that, in the midst of shouts and laughter and general "rough house," he had undressed, washed, donned his pajamas and jumped into the narrow white enamelled bed to which he had been a.s.signed.

Tomorrow lessons would begin and he wondered how he was going to fare.

He had entered on a certificate from his grammar school and had been put into the Second Senior Cla.s.s. If he could keep up with that he would be ready for college in two years. Roy's father pretended to think him backward because he would not enter until he was eighteen, and delighted in telling him of boys who had gone to college at sixteen. But Roy's mother always came to his defence. There was no sense, she declared warmly, in boys going to college before they were old enough to understand what it meant and to derive benefit from the life. And Roy's father would shake his head dubiously and mutter that he had never expected a son of his to be a dullard.

Greek and English were what Roy was afraid of. Latin and mathematics held no terrors for him. As for the other studies, he believed he could worry along with them all right. His mother had hinted hopefully of a scholarship, but Roy knew his capabilities better than she did and looked for no such honors.

Meanwhile the dormitory, full of whispers and repressed laughter for the first few minutes of darkness, had become silent save for a snore here and there. Roy's thoughts wandered back to the football field and to Horace Burlen, who was lying somewhere near in the dark, and presently his eyelids fell together and he was asleep.

How long he slept he never knew, but when he awoke suddenly to find hands gently shaking him by the shoulders it seemed that it must be morning. But the dormitory was still in darkness and the breathing of the sleepers still sounded.