“But?”
“Oh, I don’t know–she swells up so, lots of times 317over things I’d be ashamed to tell–they’re so silly.”
“Yes, I guess Mamie’s pretty cheap, but as long as you make friends with her, don’t rap her behind her back. It was all right to tell me–I quizzed you anyhow. I wish you didn’t see so much of her.”
“Why, she’s the only girl at school I can go with, who is anywhere near my own age. The Kearns twins aren’t even clean–I don’t like to go near them.”
“I shouldn’t think you would. Our public school system has its drawbacks as well as its virtues. Well, Jane, be nice to Mamie, but don’t–don’t be like her.”
“You needn’t worry; she’s going to town to school after Christmas, so I sha’n’t see much more of her.”
Mrs. Morton was still far from well, and she hung on Ernest’s letters almost pathetically. Ernest, boy fashion, was inclined to write long letters when he had something interesting to tell and preserve a stony silence when he didn’t. Life at the academy was monotonous and he had to work hard to keep up with his studies. Further, his father and Frank suspected he was having many disagreeable experiences which he kept from his family. These were still the days of rough hazing at the academy and Ernest, being a western boy, big and strong and independent, was likely to attract his full share of this unpleasant nagging. He revealed something 318of his experiences in a letter to Sherm. Sherm showed the letter to Chicken Little and Chicken Little, vaguely worried, told her father. Dr. Morton talked it over with Frank.
“There isn’t a thing you can do about it, Father. Most of it does the boys more good than harm anyway. I talked to a West Pointer once about the hazing there. He said some of it was pretty annoying and at times decidedly rough, but that if a fellow behaved himself and took it good-naturedly they soon let him alone. He said it was the best training he had ever known for curing a growing boy of the big head. Don’t worry–Ernest has sense–he’s all right.”
To Chicken Little, Ernest confided, two weeks before Christmas, that he was getting confoundedly tired of having the same things to eat week after week. “Say, Sis, if you and Mother would cook me up a lot of goodies for Christmas, I’d like it better than anything you could do. Send lots, so I can treat–a turkey and fixings.”
This letter did more for Mrs. Morton’s health than the doctor’s tonic. She tied on her apron and set to making fruit cake and cookies and every delicious and indigestible compound she could think of that would stand packing and a four-days’ journey. Chicken Little and Sherm spent their evenings making candy and picking out walnut meats to send. 319Dr. Morton made the nine-mile trip to town on the coldest day of the season to insure Ernest’s getting the box on the very day before Christmas.