“I will, if you and Peter and James will come over to my house to supper to-morrow night and spend the evening.”
James objected decidedly to this arrangement.
“Well, he can’t have the owl unless you come.”
“Come, James, do go, because I want it ever so much to put it in a cage. I never had an owl in my life. I have had crows, and eagles, and bluejays, and robins, and coons, and foxes, and gray squirrels. I’ve got a nice cage that my bob-o-link was in.”
James was sorely pressed. He liked Ned Conly, for Ned and Stillman Russell were the only boys with whom he had any intercourse approaching to intimacy. Ned Conly in school sat next beside and Stillman Russell before him; he also could not bear to prevent Bertie from getting the bird that he saw he wanted. The perspiration fairly stood in drops on his forehead. At length he said,—
“I cannot go to supper, for then there would be nobody to do the chores, and it would not look well to leave Mr. Whitman to do them, but I’ll come after supper.”
They, therefore compromised on that ground.
“The master’s coming; how shall we keep him till school’s done?” said Bert.
“Cut his head off,” said James.
This was the first time that James had ever volunteered a remark, or been guilty of an approach to a witticism, and Peter stared at him astonished.