“And now some down his neck!” someone cried.
Reed felt his collar roughly pulled from the neck and a chilling, spine-tingling sensation as a cold, wet lump went sliding down.
“You guys let me go!” he gasped. “I can’t stand this!... Oh!”
“You’ll get accustomed to it!” Sam reassured. “This snow is just a starter. It usually gets three and four feet deep here.”
Reed groaned inwardly. Snow might have been nice to look at but it was far from attractive or pleasant rubbed on his face and shoved down his back. If the fellows thought this was sport ... and intended to hand out such treatment through the winter ... well, he’d pack up his duds and beat it for home. He just didn’t fit in this atmosphere anyway. His father should have known better than to send him to such a place.
“If Pop knew what I have to put up with!” Reed moaned to himself. “I’ll have to write him about it. When he understands...!”
The letter of complaint to the elder Markham was dispatched special delivery that same night, after Reed had made a complete change of clothes and taken a hot bath for fear of possible consequences. To his relief, he contracted no cold, which indicated that he was hardier than he had supposed, having apparently stood the exposure to snow as well as his northern schoolmates.
“That’s something, anyhow,” he said, with a measure of satisfaction.
His father’s reply, also by special delivery, proved disconcertingly unsatisfactory. Rather than sympathizing with his son’s growing predicament and distaste for the north, the senior Markham wrote in part:
“I’m frankly ashamed of you, Reed. I spent three of the happiest years of my late boyhood in the north. Did you ever stop to think that it might not be the other fellows—but you?... Analyze yourself, my boy, and see if you can discover what’s wrong.