As the weeks passed Dan’s steady work began to tell. After the Christmas vacation he was among the few boys of his class who were permitted to study in their rooms instead of in the study-room, where the other boys assembled every afternoon and evening and did their work under the direction of a teacher, who for Dan’s class was Mr. Sharp. At first Dan had almost decided to keep on with his work in the study-room, because of his feeling that he could do better work there, but his lack of respect for this particular teacher finally led him to accept the privilege and his study-hours were therefore spent in the quiet of his own room.
A strong friendship had sprung up between Hodge, Ned, Smith, and Dan. At the Christmas holidays the three boys had been visitors in Dan’s home in Rodman. The country life in winter had been so new and novel to the visitors that the three boys had highly enjoyed their vacation-time. The fact that Dan’s home was a humble one apparently only served to increase the feeling of friendliness which they had for Dan, while for his quiet little mother everyone had an admiration that was as strong as the respect and affection for her boy. Dan had urged Walter to come to Rodman with his friends, but the latter had curtly declined and Dan had not repeated the invitation.
On the train which the four boys took when the day of departure from Rodman arrived, Dan and Ned were seated together. The enthusiasm of Dan’s friends over their visit was keen and in course of their conversation Ned said to Dan: “It’s simply great! I never coasted right over the tops of fences before. The crust was hard enough to hold up a horse.”
“The coasting is all right,” replied Dan lightly. “It is the snow-shovel that is the instrument of torture. When you have shoveled through two or three of those eight-foot drifts you lose a little of your enthusiasm for snow that sometimes comes in November and stays right with us till April. Last year we had a hundred and forty-three days of sleighing.”
“Great!” exclaimed Ned. “That is what puts the breath of life into you. I can understand now where you get some of the nerve you’ve shown.”
“‘Nerve’! I don’t know that I have any nerve.”
“Well, you have, whether you know it or not.”
“I guess it’s because you’re my friend that you say that.”
“Not a bit. It takes nerve to do what you’re doing.”