“Oh, Neddie!” exclaimed his mother, as the teal, now, after cooking, was smaller than ever. “Do you mean to say that it took two boys and a gun and nearly a whole day to kill a poor little bird like that?”
“It’s good, anyway,” excused Ned, his mouth full.
[ CHAPTER IX]
THE CAMPAIGN PARADE
But this fall, gun and duck did not stand as the only excitement for Ned and the other Beaufort youth. Politics were red hot. A president and vice-president of the United States were to be elected, and the town was in a perfect ferment day and night.
There were caucuses and parades and “rallies” and sidewalk discussions and even fights, in all of which the boys, and the girls, too, took lively interest.
At school the recesses were given over, for the most part, to debate. Ned’s father was a Republican, Ned was what his father was, and Bob was what Ned was; Mr. Lucas was a Democrat, therefore Hal was a Democrat; Tom had no father living, and so he sided with neither cause, but said that he “didn’t care.”
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