By this time, too, Neale O'Neil's green halo was beginning to wear off. As Mr. Con Murphy said, he looked less like "a blushin' grane onion" than he had immediately after the concoction the drugstore clerk had sold him took effect.
"And 'tis hopin' 'twill be a lesson ye'll allus remimber," pursued the old cobbler. "Niver thrust too much to whativer comes in a bottle! Remimber 'tis not the label ye air to use. The only r'ally honest label that kems out of a drug-sthore is thim that has the skull and crossbones on 'em. You kin be sure of them; they're pizen an' no mistake!"
Neale had to listen to a good deal that was harder to bear than any of Mr. Murphy's quaint philosophy. But he restrained himself and did not fight any boy going to school.
In the first place, Neale O'Neil was going to school for just one purpose. He wished to learn. To boys and girls who had always had the advantages of school, this desire seemed strange enough. They could not understand Neale.
And because of his earnestness about study, and because he refused to tell anything about himself, they counted Neale odd. The Corner House girls were the only real friends the boy had in Milton among the young folk. But some older people began to count Neale as a boy of promise.
Green as his head was dyed, it was a perfectly good head when it came to study, as he had assured Mr. Marks. The principal watched the youngster and formed a better opinion of him than he had at first borne. Miss Shipman found him a perfectly satisfactory scholar.
The people he worked for at odd jobs, after and before school, learned that he was faithful and smart. Mr. Con Murphy had a good word for the boy to everybody who came into his shop.
Yet, withal, he could not make close friends. One must give confidence for confidence if one wishes to make warm friendships. And Neale was as secretive as he could be.
Neale kept close to the neighborhood of the cobbler's and the old Corner House. Agnes told Ruth that she believed Neale never turned a corner without first peeking around it! He was always on the qui vive—expecting to meet somebody of whom he was afraid. And every morning he ran over to the Corner House early and looked at the first column on the front page of the Morning Post, as it lay on the big veranda.
The four Corner House girls all achieved some distinction in their school grades within the first few weeks of the fall term. Ruth made friends as she always did wherever she went. Other girls did not get a sudden "crush" on Ruth Kenway, and then as quickly forget her. Friendship for her was based upon respect and admiration for her sense and fine qualities of character.