Jack Sherrill had always had a particularly warm interest in his Cousin Hazel. He, too, was motherless. The fifteen-year-old lad had gone into one of the great preparatory schools with the terrible mother-want in his heart and life. Like Hazel, he, too, was an only child, and consequently without the guidance and help of an elder brother or sister. His father was all that a man, absorbed in large business interests, could be to the son whom he saw in vacation time only.
"You are born a gentleman, Jack," he had said to him when he was about to enter Harvard; "remember to conduct yourself as such. You 'll not find it an easy matter at times--I did n't--but you will find it pays; and--and remember your mother." Then Mr. Sherrill had wrung his boy's hand, and hurried away.
It was the only time in the three years since she had been lost to him, that his father had borne to mention the lad's mother to him. To Jack it was like a last will and testament, and he wrote it not only in his memory, but on his heart.
He had tried, yes, honestly, amid the manifold temptations of his life and his "set," to live up to a certain ideal of his own, but it had been slow work; and the last three months of his sophomore year had been far from satisfactory to himself.
He was thinking this over as he rode slowly up the steep road to Mount Hunger. He had come up that morning to call on Mrs. Blossom, for he knew that the social law of hospitality demanded that he should pay his respects to Rose Blossom's mother and Hazel's guardian before his friends should break bread in the house.
That tall girl in the sunbonnet was a disappointment--but then, he had been a fool to expect anything else just because she happened to sing one of Barry Cornwall's love-songs. He rode out of the leafy woods'-road, and came unexpectedly upon the farmhouse. Chi saw him from the barn, and came out to meet him.
"Is Mrs. Blossom at home?" asked Jack, lifting his cap.
Chi patted Little Shaver's neck, shining like polished mahogany. "Yes, she 's home, 'n' she 'll be glad to see you. You 'll find her right in the kitchen, 'n' I 'll tend to this little chap--what's his name?"
"Little Shaver, he 's my polo pony."
"George Washington! He knows a thing or two. He most winked at me," laughed Chi.