He had almost forgotten his troubles when he went in to dinner, but as soon as he ascended to his room to study they all came back, for there sat the frog on his table, popping its eyes out at him most unpleasantly.
“I guess I’ll study downstairs,” he thought. “I’ll have the library to myself to-night. Mother and Father have gone to the Symphony, and I guess Cousin Virginia’s out somewhere.”
He settled down comfortably in the library, and was getting on famously with his lessons when the bell rang and a masculine voice asked for his Cousin Virginia. She came down presently and a lively conversation began in the front room just out of sight but not out of sound of Wendell. He managed, however, to keep his mind on his work, for it was very silly talk and not at all interesting. The man was a Harvard student from New York, and they chattered on about strangers to Wendell whom they knew in common.
“Do you like Boston?” Wendell heard the man say, and Virginia’s clear and rather high-pitched voice answered,
“Of course I like Boston. I’ll put it more strongly, I thoroughly enjoy Boston. I never supposed any place could be so—so historical, so absolutely, thoroughly, naively, unselfconsciously historical. Why, even little Wendell—”
“She needn’t little me,” thought Wendell savagely.
“—invited me to see a play he was to be in, in school, and what do you suppose? it was Revolutionary. All about hiding away a wounded soldier, with allusions to the British encamped on Boston Common, and the tax on tea. I don’t believe Boston knows anything has happened in history since the Boston Tea Party.”
“You’ve said it,” said the young man, who seemed to admire Virginia very much.
“And their holidays,” went on the foolish girl. “When I was here last spring, I went out to shop on the nineteenth of April, and would you believe it? the shops were closed. Patriots’ Day, if you please, when the farmers fired the shot heard round the world! I came in and said to Auntie, ‘Do you by any chance have a holiday in Boston on the fourth of July, Auntie?’ ‘Why, yes, dear,’ she said, ‘of course.’ I said, ‘But why? It isn’t Emerson’s birthday, is it?’ and she said, ‘Why, my dear, you must know it is Independence Day.’ ‘Oh, yes, Auntie,’ I said, ‘but why celebrate it in Boston? That little event was pulled off in Philadelphia. Hasn’t Boston enough?’”
“Ha, ha!” laughed the young man. “That was a good one on Boston.”