“Little!” echoed the other, holding up the book he had taken from its wrappings. “Why, I’ve been meaning to get this for over half a year. And the best of it is you earned every cent it cost, while I had most of my money from my folks. It’s worth ten times as much as what I paid for the skates, every time, and don’t you forget it.”
“The finest skates I ever saw,” said Dick, joyously, as he again examined his present. “I can see what bully times I’ll have this winter—that is of nights, after I get home from work.”
“Oh! rats! don’t say that as if you meant it, Dick. If you leave school I’ll never have the heart to keep on to graduation time. You know how we planned to stick together through thick and thin. I’ll ask dad to let me start working, too, see if I don’t.”
“That would be silly of you,” Dick told him. “But let’s try to forget it all, for one more day. Time enough to bother when tomorrow comes.”
“What’s this I see!” exclaimed Leslie, humorously. “Five stockings hung up in a row; and here’s little Susie beginning to look into hers, after she’s done staring at the gay tree. What luck did you have, Dick?”
“Oh! I hadn’t thought to look yet,” admitted the other. “In fact, I overslept, and had just gone into the kitchen to see if I could help mother with breakfast when you knocked on the door.”
He stepped over to the mantel, gave the fire some attention to start it to burning briskly again, and was about to take hold of the stocking that had been hung up for him when he stopped short.
Something was peeping above the one his mother had hung up for herself, and into which Dick had managed to cram the present he had purchased for her. It looked like a formidable document to Dick too, and somehow the sight of it gave him a cold shiver, as though he feared new developments that might mean more trouble.
“I wonder what it is,” he muttered, uneasily; and then overcome by curiosity, he reached forth his hand, and boldly drew the document out.
Leslie too leaned forward as Dick gazed at the paper which he now knew Uncle Silas must have placed there after all the rest had retired.