MR. Morton’s school closed on the last day of June, and the parents of the pupils were so well pleased with the progress their sons had made that almost all of them thanked the teacher, besides paying him, and they hoped that he would open it again in the autumn. Mr. Morton thanked the gentlemen in return, and said he would think about it; he was not certain that he could afford to begin a new term unless more pupils were promised, although he did not believe the entire county could supply better boys than those he had already taught at Laketon.
The boys, when they heard this, determined that they would not be outdone in the way of compliment, so they resolved, at a full meeting held in Sam Wardwell’s father’s barn, that Mr. Morton was a brick, and the class would prove it by giving him as handsome a gold watch-chain as could be bought by a contribution of fifty cents from each of the twenty-three boys. Every boy paid in his fifty cents, although some of them had to part with special treasures in order to get the money. Benny Mallow sacrificed his whole collection of birds’ eggs, which included forty-seven varieties, after having first vainly endeavored to raise the money upon two mole-skins, his swimming tights, and a very large lion that he had spent nearly a day in cutting from a menagerie poster. The chain, suitably inscribed, was formally presented in a neat speech by Joe Appleby; Paul Grayson absolutely refused to do it, insisting that Joe was the real head of the school; indeed, Paul himself asked Joe to make the speech, and from that time forth Joe himself pronounced Paul a royal good fellow, and even introduced him to all girls of his acquaintance who wore long dresses.
For at least a month after school closed the boys were as busy at one sort of play and another as if they had a great deal of lost time to make up. Getting ready for the Fourth of July consumed nearly a week, and getting over the accidents of the day took a week more. Some of the boys went fishing every day; others tried boating; two or three made long pedestrian tours—or started on them—and a few went with Mr. Morton and Paul on short mineralogical and botanical excursions.
Then, just as mere sport began to be wearisome, August came in, and the larger fruits of all sorts began to ripen. Fruit was so plenty in and about Laketon that no one attached special value to it; a respectable boy needed only to ask in order to get all he could eat, so boys were invited to each other’s gardens to try early apples or plums or pears, and as no boy was exactly sure which particular fruit or variety he most liked, the visits were about as numerous as the varieties. Later in the month the peaches ripened; and as the boy who could not eat a hatful at a sitting was not considered very much of a fellow, several hours of every clear day were consumed by attention to peach-trees.
Besides all these delightful duties, a great deal of talking had to be done about the coming cold season. Boys who had spent unsatisfactory autumns and winters in other years began in time to trade for such skates, or sleds, or game bags, or other necessities as they might be without, and the result was that some other boys who traded found themselves in a very bad way when cold weather came. Between all the occupations named, time flew so fast that September and the beginning of another school term were very near at hand before any boy had half finished all that he had meant to do during vacation.
There were still some pleasant things to look forward to, though: court would sit in the first week of September, and then the counterfeiter would be tried, while on the very first day of September would come Benny Mallow’s birthday party—an affair that every year was looked forward to with pleasure; for Benny’s mother, although far from rich, was very proud of her children, and always made their little companies as pleasant as any ever given in Laketon for young people. When Benny’s birthday anniversary arrived, every respectable boy who knew him was sure to be invited, even if he had shamefully cheated Benny in a trade a week before, and Benny generally was cheated when he traded at all, for whatever thing he wanted seemed so immense beside what he had to offer for it, that year by year he seemed to own less and less.
At last the night of the party came, and even Joe Appleby, whose own birthday parties were quite choice affairs, was manly enough to declare that it was the finest thing of the year. The house was tastefully dressed with flowers, which always grew to perfection in Mrs. Mallow’s garden, and the lady of the house knew just how to use them to the best advantage. Benny and his sister received the guests; and although Benny was barely twelve years old that day, and rather small for his age, he appeared quite graceful and manly in his new Sunday suit, which had not, like the new suits of most of the Laketon boys, been cut with a view to his growing within the year. His sister Bessie was only a month or two beyond her tenth birthday, but in white muslin and blue ribbons, with her flaxen hair in a long heavy braid on her back, and her bright blue eyes and delicate pink cheeks, she was pretty enough to distract attention from some girls who wore longer dresses, and, indeed, from several girls in very long dresses, who had been invited out of respect for the tastes of Joe Appleby, Will Palmer, and Paul Grayson.
Mrs. Mallow was as successful at entertaining young people as she was in dressing her children and ornamenting her little cottage. She had prepared charades, and given Bessie a lot of new riddles to propose, and she herself played on her rather old piano some airs that the boys enjoyed far more than they did the “exercises” that their sisters were continually drumming. Several of the boys were rather disappointed at there being no kissing games, but they compromised on “choosing partners;” and as there were some guessing tricks, in which the boys who missed had each to select a girl, and retire to the hall with her until a new “guess” was agreed upon, it is quite probable that most of the boys enjoyed opportunities for kissing their particular lady friends at least once or twice.
As for the supper, a month passed before Sam Wardwell could think of it without his mouth watering. There were chicken salad and three kinds of cake, and ice-cream and water ices and lemonade, and oranges and bananas that had come all the way from New York in a box by themselves, and there were mottoes and mixed candies and figs and raisins and English walnuts, while so many of the almonds had double kernels that every girl in the room ate at least two philopenas, and therefore had enough to busy her mind for a day in determining what presents she would claim.
But, in spite of a well-supplied table and forty or fifty appetites that never had been known to fail, full justice was not done to that supper, for while at least half of the company had not got through with the cream and ices, and Sam Wardwell had only had time to taste one kind of cake (having helped himself three times to chicken salad), a small colored boy, who knew by experience that news-carrying levels all ranks, if only the news is great enough, knocked at the door, and asked for Benny. While the door stood ajar, and Mrs. Mallow went in search of her boy, the spectacle of a number of other boys standing in the hall was too much for the colored boy, so he gasped, “De counterfeiter done broke out ob de jail!”