“And you mean—you mean—” (Dan’s voice trembled, his eyes shone,)—“you mean I can come back?”
“Come back, of course, when school opens.”
“Jing!” said Dan, drawing a long breath. “I—I thought you were putting me out for good and all. I thought, with the fight and the climb and hurting Freddy I—I had done for myself. I thought—” Here Dan’s feelings became too much for him, and he could only gulp down the sob that rose in his throat, with a look that went to Father Regan’s kind heart.
“My poor boy, no, no! Put you out of Saint Andrew’s for good and all! I never thought of such a thing for a moment. Of course I object seriously to fighting, to your reckless venture to Old Top; but—well, you had strong temptations, and in vacation time one must not be too severe. At Killykinick there will be more elbow-room. Have you ever been to the seashore?”
“Never farther than the wharfs. But I can swim and dive and float,” answered Dan, wisely reserving the information that, as a member of the “Wharf Rats,” he had been ducked overboard at the age of six, to sink or swim.
“Good!” said Father Regan. “Then you’ll have a fine time. And I am depending on you to look out for the other boys. They have grown up in softer ways, and are not used to roughing it, as it is likely you will have to rough it at Killykinick. But it will be good for you all,—for you all,” repeated the speaker cheerily, as he saw in Dan’s brightening face the joyful relief the boy did not know how to speak. “And you will come back ready for double ‘X’ work in the fall. I am looking for great things from you, Dan. You’ve made a fine start, my boy! Keep it up, and some day you will be signing all the capital letters to Dan Dolan’s name that Saint Andrew’s can bestow.”
“Sure I don’t know about that, Father,” said Dan, his speech softening into Aunt Winnie’s Irish tones with the warming of his heart. “You’re very good to me, but sometimes I think—well, what I thrashed Dud Fielding for telling me: that I’ve no right to be pushing into a grand school like this. I ought to keep my place.”
“And where is your place?” was the calm question.
“Sure, sure—” Dan hesitated as he recalled a very checkered childhood. “Now that Aunt Winnie is all broke up, I can’t say, Father.”
“Then I will tell you, my boy! Just now, by the goodness and guidance of God, it is here,—here, where you have equal rights with any boy in the school. You have won them in winning your scholarship; they are yours as justly as if you had a father paying a thousand a year. There may be a little rough rubbing now and then from fellows like Dud Fielding; but—well, everything that is worth having has its cost. So stand to your colors! Be, as you said yesterday, neither a bully nor a coward, but a man. Now go to see Aunt Winnie and bid her good-bye. Tell her I am sending you off for the jolliest kind of a holiday to Killykinick.”