“Don’t fail to tell your father how well I remember our meeting at The Helena; and say to him that the next time I come to Boston, I shall surely call on him. I’m glad to have the chance to get acquainted with you for his sake, for he is a man whom every one must delight to honor; and I am so much indebted to him that I can only hope the time may come when I can do something either for him or for his sons.”
He paused while he shook hands with Harry; then he turned to Leon, whom he had been studying closely, during the evening.
“Let me congratulate you most heartily on your promotion,” he said. “So far as I can judge by what I have seen to-day, you deserve it, for you’ve the making of a soldier in you. Some day, perhaps, we may meet again in service out on the plains.”
“Oh dear! I wish he meant what he said, and there was any chance of it,” said Leon, as their guests took their departure.
“Why, you wouldn’t really like to go into the army?” And Harry looked at his brother in surprise.
“Wouldn’t I, though!” echoed Leon. “I’d like it better than anything else. I believe I was meant for a fighter; not fisticuffs, like the time I knocked Winslow over, but regular army service. I wonder if daddy would let me do it.” And Leon gave his more peaceful brother a look which was anything but blood-thirsty, as Harry asked again,—
“How would you like it to have to give up college and just go to West Point? Life there isn’t anything but states-prison discipline.”
“Give me a chance to choose, and I’d show you what I’d do. But ’tisn’t so easy to get in at West Point, and I shall never get the chance. I shall most likely end by being a minister, or a lawyer, or something else that’s poky.” And Leon went to his desk, to add a postscript to his letter to his father, telling him of their call from Captain Curtis, and of the captain’s answer to his own unspoken longings.
Three days later, the Wilders had been out for a long walk up to the lake and back. It had been an unusually merry walk, too, for the boys, excited by the near prospect of vacation, were all full of fun; while Max, in particular, had invented a dozen different pranks to amuse and torment the others, until Harry had suggested dropping him into the lake and leaving him there, to meditate upon his sins. An hour before supper, they came trooping home, as hungry and hearty as nine lads could be, all laughing and talking at once. As they separated, to go to their rooms, Alex paused at the stairway window long enough to see the doctor walking hurriedly up the hill, with an open letter in his hand, and his head bowed, as if in deep and painful thought. For a moment, the boy watched him anxiously, for he knew that the doctor rarely came to Old Flemming, and never at this hour in the day, when he was usually preparing for dinner.
“I hope nothing’s wrong,” he said to himself, as he went on. Then he dismissed the matter from his mind, for Stanley Campbell had overtaken him, with a question about the next day’s plans.