“Oh, thank you, sir!” cried Phil, with such a revulsion of feeling from deepest disappointment to brightest hope, that even the sunset seemed suddenly to have taken on a new and more radiant splendor. “Of course I promise! and, of course, I shall be only too glad to try the examinations!”
“Very well,” said Mr. Blake. “Come to my study to-morrow evening directly after tea, and we will make a beginning with English literature and Latin. In the mean time don’t mention to any one, excepting your aunt, what you are doing.”
How thankful Phil was that he had so used his time as to be able to approach this trial with confidence, and how hard he did work during the next three days in revising his studies of the previous year! What anxious minutes he spent at the conclusion of the third evening of examination, while Mr. Blake looked over and marked the last paper, the one in mathematics, that he had just handed in.
“It’s all right, Philip!” the head-master finally announced, “and I do most heartily congratulate you on your success. This last paper brings your average up to ninety-three per cent., which, as compared with the class standings of the past ten years, lands you well within the limit named by your father. I therefore feel no hesitation in giving you that rank, and you may, with a clear conscience, start on your journey just as soon as your preparations can be made. Good-bye! God bless you! I trust you will have the glorious time you expect, and which you have so honestly earned. I also hope that in the autumn you will return to us with a richly increased knowledge of our great country, and particularly of that vast Northern territory concerning which there is still so little general information.”
If the last three days had been busy ones for Phil, they had been equally so for his aunt Ruth, for in that short time she had been compelled to do all the making ready and packing, for which she had expected to have as many weeks. In these few days, during the infrequent intervals that her nephew spared from his studies, she felt it her duty to stock his mind with stores of good advice and oft-repeated warnings against his besetting fault. He listened with what patience he could command, but finally laughingly declared that it would be necessary for him to live at least a hundred years to put all her precepts into practice.
“Oh, but Phil!” she exclaimed, pausing in the packing of his trunk to emphasize her remarks, “you are so young and so careless, and the journey before you is so filled with terrible possibilities! I declare I don’t know but that I ought to go along to take care of you.”
“Nonsense, Aunt Rue!” retorted the young athlete, at the same time picking up the slight figure of his anxious relative and swinging her, ruffled and indignant, into his father’s great leathern arm-chair; “if I’m not old enough and big enough now to take care of myself, I never shall be. Of course I know that I have been careless at times, and heedless, and all that. I can assure you, though, that my careless days are things of the past, and that hereafter no graybeard of your acquaintance will afford a more perfect model of prudence than your humble nephew. As for you! well, the mere idea of a dear little thing like you wandering away out there among the Siwashes to protect a fellow of my size is prodigiously absurd. It surely is.”
“Absurd or not, Master Impudence, you’ll see the day more than once, before this trip is ended, that you’ll wish your old aunty was at hand with a little of her common-sense to help you out of some reckless scrape or other. Mark my words, you will.”
“All right, Aunt Rue, I’ll mark down your words as you suggest; mark ’em down to half-price. I’ll also make a note in my log-book of every time I get stranded for want of your counsel. Then when the cruise is over I promise to make a full confession, and humbly beg for those chunks of wisdom that shall enable me to steer clear of all such rocks in the future.”
“Get away with your foolishness, you young scapegrace!” cried Aunt Ruth, jumping down from the arm-chair and attempting a box on Phil’s ear, which the boy skilfully dodged, as a preliminary to resuming her packing.