CHAPTER III
It was on an afternoon late in January that the flag was finally presented to the school. It was a day marked with fierce winds and flurries of snow, like a day in March.
But the inclement weather did not prevent people from coming to the presentation exercises. The school room was full; even the aisles were filled, and more than one late-comer was turned away because there was no more room.
Notwithstanding the fact that the Riverbeds were to have the lion's share of the honors of the occasion, and the further fact that resentment in the ranks of the Hilltops ran strong and deep, and doubly so since the outwitting of their leader, no attempt was made to block the program, or to interfere, in any way, with the success of the occasion.
There were, indeed, some secret whisperings in a little group of which Elmer Cuddeback was the center; but, if any mischief was brewing, Pen did not know of it.
Moreover, was it not Pen's grandfather who had given the flag, and who was to be the chief guest of the school, and was it not up to the Hilltops to see that he was treated with becoming courtesy? At any rate that was the "consensus of opinion" among them. Colonel Butler had prepared his presentation speech with great care. Twice he had read it aloud in his library to his grandson and to his daughter Millicent.
His grandson had only favorable comment to make, but his daughter Millicent criticised it sharply. She said that it was twice too long, that it had too much "spread eagle" in it, and that it would be away over the heads of his audience anyway. So the colonel modified it somewhat; but, unfortunately, he neither made it simpler nor appreciably shorter.
Aleck, too, under the supervision of his teacher, had prepared a fitting and patriotic response which he had committed to memory and had rehearsed many times. Pupils taking part in the rest of the program had been carefully and patiently drilled, and every one looked forward to an occasion which would be marked as a red-letter day in the history of the Chestnut Hill school.
The exercises opened with the singing of "The Star Spangled Banner," by the school. There was a brief prayer by the pastor of one of the village churches. Next came a recitation, "Barbara Frietchie," by a small girl. Then another girl read a brief history of the American flag. She was followed by James Garfield Morrissey, the crack elocutionist of the school, who recited, in fine form, a well-known patriotic poem, written to commemorate the heroism of American sailors who cheered the flag as they went down with the sinking flag-ship Trenton in a hurricane which swept the Samoan coast in 1889.
THE BANNER OF THE SEA