“You always catch a guy when he’s not expecting anything,” he said.
“Do you good,” she retorted serenely. “Ever since you went away to school, you’ve had a high and mighty opinion of yourself. I hope you get over it. Aren’t these apples swell, though? Do you suppose they’ll mind very much if we stay just a few minutes? Don’t you love this old pond, Bill? Remember your flat-bottomed boat that always leaked when we used to go fishing in it. How I hated to take turns bailing it out.”
“Yeah. Gee, I wish I didn’t have to go back to school so soon.”
“Wouldn’t it be strange, Bill, if either of us were famous some day? I know you’re going to be somebody special. Maybe it will be in natural history.”
Billie laughed comfortably, perching himself just below her on the heavy timbers of the old sluice gate. “Grandfather says I have a great responsibility on my shoulders, because I’m the last of the Ellis family. He says there’s always been an Ellis in the State Legislature at Hartford, ever since there was a legislature, and just as soon as I’m old enough, he’s going to send me to law school. Gee, I wish he wouldn’t. Think of being shut up all day long in an office.”
Far down the lane they heard the others calling them and Doris sprang up, scattering apples as she did so.
“I’d forgotten all about the party,” she exclaimed. “Anyway, I’m glad we had a chance to talk. If I were you, I’d just read and study everything I could lay my hands on about insects and things, all the time I was in school, and then when the Judge sees that you’re in dead earnest about it, he’ll let you go on. I heard Dad say that Mr. Howard knew more about insects than any man he’d ever met, and that he was considered one of the coming experts in government work. Why, Bill, it’s just like a great scientist or doctor, who is able to discover a certain germ that can be used as a toxin, only you doctor plants and things.”
“I know,” Billie agreed enthusiastically. “There’s some man who discovered the cause of the wheat blight in the south and somebody else figuring out what was killing our chestnuts off. Doris, you’re a swell pal. If it wasn’t for you, I don’t know whether I’d ever have seen a chance to study what I want to, but you encourage me.”
Doris laughed and tagged him on the shoulder as she broke into a run. “You’re it. Don’t give anyone else the credit for starting you off in the way you know you ought to go. Just take a deep breath and race for it.”