“Some queer place called Killykinick,” answered Dan, who was now able to sit up and be sociable.
“Killykinick?” repeated his companion, in a startled tone. “Did you say you were going to Killykinick?”
“Yes,” answered Dan. “Freddy’s uncle or cousin or somebody died a while ago and left him a place there. Freddy has a lot of houses and money and things all his own. It’s lucky he has. He isn’t the kind to rough it and tough it for himself. Not that he hasn’t plenty of grit,” went on Freddy’s chum, hastily. “He’s as plucky a little chap as I ever saw. But he’s been used to having life soft and easy. He is the ‘big bug’ sort. (I ain’t.) So I’m glad he has money enough to make things smooth at the start, though his no-’count father did skip off and leave him when he was only five years old.”
“His father left him?” repeated Dan’s companion. “Why?”
“Don’t know,” answered Dan. “Just naturally a ‘quitter,’ I guess. Lots of menfolks are. Want a free foot and no bother. But to shake a nice little chap like Freddy I call a dirty, mean trick, don’t you?”
“There might be reasons,” was the hesitating rejoinder.
“What reason?” asked Dan, gruffly. “There ain’t any sort of reason why a father shouldn’t stick to his job. I hate a ‘quitter,’ anyhow,” concluded Dan, decisively.
“Wait until you are twenty years older before you say that, my boy!” was the answer. “Perhaps then you will know what quitting costs and means. But you’re an old chum for that little boy. I saw him with you down below. How is it that you’re such friends?”
And then Dan, being of a communicative nature, and seeing no cause for reserve, told his new acquaintance all about the scholarship that had introduced him into spheres of birth and breeding to which he frankly confessed he could make no claim.
“I’m not Freddy’s sort, I know; but he took to me somehow,—I can’t tell why.”