"I haven't got any place to go to," said Mrs. Lufkin. "I thought that, seeing that we had so much money, I could take a breathing spell for a week."
"Take two weeks," said Hank. "It won't be any too long to enable you to get your breath. I don't see why father won't go to work. He can make as much as I can, and he wouldn't have to keep bothering me for money. I wonder if all fathers are like him?"
"No, they are not. There's Captain Nellis, for instance."
"I tell you he was a father worth having. That boy had nothing to do but go to school, and when he came home his father was always glad to see him. What a pity it is that Bob is so low down in the world as to have to depend on his uncle for money."
"Does his uncle give him any money?"
"I don't know, but I think he does. He is living now with old Ben Watson, and they are just as happy as two bugs in a rug. Say, mother, I guess I will put on my good clothes to-day."
His mother did not raise any objection, and when the breakfast dishes had been washed and things put to rights about the house Hank disappeared, and when he came out again he looked very unlike the ragged boy who had gone into the bedroom a few minutes before. To have taken a single look at him, a stranger would have thought he was the son of a well-to-do man.
"I remember that I saved my money for six months to buy this suit of clothes," said Hank to himself, surveying as much of his person as he could in the little seven-by-nine looking-glass that stood in his mother's room. "How mad father was! I thought he was going to take the clothes away and pawn them; but thank goodness he has not got so low in the world as that comes to. If he should get into the way of pawning things it would be all over with us. He would have to go to the work-house, sure."
When Hank arrived at Ben's house he found the old sailor there on the porch, together with Bob Nellis and a new-comer, Leon Sprague, whom he had not seen before since his return from school. Leon was sitting with Captain Nellis's sword unsheathed in his lap, and appeared to be listening to something old Ben was telling him, but he jumped up and greeted Hank very cordially.
"Hank, I congratulate you on your streak of good luck," said Leon. "I suppose you don't care if Bob has told me about it?"