CHAPTER XIII
DAYS OF PLEASURE
The holiday migration from Ridgley School began six days before Christmas. Within a few hours the dormitories on the hill, which for months had resounded to the sound of voices, suddenly became silent and almost deserted; a few members of the school lingered and half a dozen of the faculty remained to spend a part or all of the vacation on the hill, but the great majority set forth to the four quarters of the wind. Among those who took the morning train on that day of great exodus were Neil Durant and Teeny-bits Holbrook. Within three hours, as the engine dragged its load westward, the Ridgleyites who at the start had crowded two cars had diminished in number to no more than a score. Every large station along the way claimed two or three and as they left they shouted back farewells and, loaded down with suitcases, went out to greet the friends and relatives who had come to meet them. They all had a word for Neil Durant and Teeny-bits—a special word it seemed—for there was no question that recent events had ripened the friendships and enhanced the popularity of these two members of "the best school in the world."
What happiness this was, Teeny-bits said to himself, to be going on a vacation with a fellow like Neil Durant and to have evidence at every moment of the friendship of such a "good crowd" as these fellows who were piling off the train and yelling out their good-bys. It all made him feel how much the last three months had brought into his life, how much he owed to the generosity of old Fennimore Ridgley who, though long ago laid to rest in his grave, had made it possible by his gift for Teeny-bits to come to Ridgley School.
At two o'clock the train pulled into the station of Dellsport where Teeny-bits and Neil said good-by to the half dozen of their schoolmates who were going farther west. They found waiting for them in a closed car Mrs. Durant and Sylvia Durant, Neil's sister, who immediately made Teeny-bits feel at ease by talking about school affairs. It had been a tremendous disappointment, it seemed, to both Mrs. Durant and Sylvia that they had been unable to come to the football game which had resulted so gloriously for Ridgley.
"If it hadn't been for the influenza," said Sylvia, "you would have heard some terrible shrieking on the day of that game—I know I'd have yelled loud enough so that every one would have heard me, because there was nothing in the world that I wanted quite so much as to have Ridgley come through. And when we got Neil's telegram maybe I didn't make the windows rattle! And mother almost yelled, too."
"We had a terrible quarrel over the newspaper the next day," said Mrs. Durant, "and I finally compromised by letting Sylvia read the whole story aloud, so we know just what happened and how one of you evened the score at the crucial moment and how the other fellow carried the ball across at the end of the game."
Almost before Teeny-bits realized it he was talking to these two pleasant persons as if he had known them all his life.
"I want you to act just as if this were your own home," said Mrs. Durant when she had led the way into the Durant house on Bennington Street. "I shall have to call you Teeny-bits—and I hope you won't mind—because Neil has always spoken of you that way in his letters and 'Mr. Holbrook' would sound formal, wouldn't it?"
"It would make me feel like a stick of wood," said Teeny-bits. "I don't think any one ever called me that in my life. I've just been Teeny-bits and I guess I always shall be."