“The boys,” answered Brother Bart,—“the four of them that was left over with us.”
“Four of them?” repeated the Father, who, with the closing of the schools, had felt the burden of his responsibilities drop. “True, true! I quite forgot we have four boys with us. It must be dull for the poor fellows.”
“Dull!” echoed Brother Bart, grimly,—“dull is it, yer reverence? It’s in some divilment they are from morning until night. There’s no rule for vacation days, as Mr. Linton says; and so the four of them are running wild as red Indians, up in the bell tower, and in the ice pond that’s six feet deep with black water, and scampering over the highest ledge of the dormitory roof, till my heart nearly leaps from my mouth.”
“Poor fellows!” said Father Regan, indulgently. “It’s hard on them, of course. Let me see! Colonel Fielding and his wife are in the Philippines, I remember, and asked to leave Dudley with us; and Judge Norris couldn’t take Will with him to Japan; and there’s our own little Fred of course,—we always have him; and—”
“That dare-devil of a Dan Dolan, that’s the worst of all!” burst forth Brother Bart. “It’s for me sins he was left here, I know; with the Laddie following everywhere he leads, like he was bewitched.”
“Poor Danny! Aren’t you a little hard on him, Brother Bart?” was the smiling question.
“Sure I am, I am,—God forgive me for that same!” answered Brother Bart, penitently. “But I’m no saint like the rest of ye; and Laddie crept into my heart six years ago, and I can’t put him out. Wild Dan Dolan is no fit mate for him.”
“Why not?” asked Father Regan, gravely, though there was a quizzical gleam in his eye.
“Sure, because—because—” hesitated Brother Bart, rather staggered by the question. “Sure ye know yerself, Father.”
“No, I don’t,” was the calm reply. “Dan may be wild and mischievous—a little rough perhaps, poor boy!—but he will do Freddy no harm. He is a bright, honest, manly fellow, making a brave fight against odds that are hard to face; and we must give him his chance, Brother Bart. I promised his good old aunt, who was broken-hearted at leaving him, that I would do all I could for her friendless, homeless boy. As for mischief—well, I rather like a spice of mischief at his age. It is a sign of good health, body and soul. But we must try to give it a safer outlet than roofs and bell towers,” he added thoughtfully. “Let me see! If we could send our ‘left overs’ some place where they could have more freedom. Why—why, now that I think of it” (the speaker’s grave face brightened as he took up the letter he had been reading), “maybe there’s a chance for them right here. Father Tom Rayburn has just written me that Freddy has fallen heir to some queer old place on the New England coast. It belonged to his mother’s great-uncle, an old whaling captain, who lived there after an eccentric fashion of his own. It seems that this ship was stranded on this island more than fifty years ago, and he fixed up the wreck, and lived there until his death this past month. The place has no value, Father Tom thinks; but he spent two of the jolliest summers of his own boyhood with an old Captain Kane at Killykinick.”