“Goodness!” gasped Miss Minna. “Then what is he doing up here with boys like you?”
“Pushed in,” answered Dud, hotly. “He has enough nerve to push anywhere. St. Andrew’s gives a scholarship at the parochial school, and he won it; and, as he hadn’t any place to go this summer, they bunched him in with us. But you can see what he is at one look.”
“Oh, I did,—I did!” murmured Miss Minna. “I saw at the very first that he was not our sort; but, being with nice boys like you, I thought he must be all right. He isn’t bad-looking, and such nerve for a bootblack! Just look how he is making up to little Polly Forester!”
To an impartial observer it would have really seemed the other way. Polly herself was “making up” most openly to this nicest boy she ever saw. Tripping along by Dan’s side, she was extending a general invitation, in which Dan was specialized above all others.
“I am going to have a birthday party next week, and I want you to come, and bring all the other boys from Killykinick. It’s the first party I’ve ever had; but mamma is feeling better this year, and I’ll be ten years old, and she’s going to have things just lovely for me,—music and dancing, and ice-cream made into flowers and birds, and a Jack Horner pie with fine presents in it. Wouldn’t you like to come, Dan?”
“You bet!” was the ready answer; for a party of young persons like Miss Polly was, from his outlook, a very simple affair. “When is it coming off?”
“Thursday,” said Polly,—“Thursday evening at six, in our garden. And you needn’t dress up. Boys hate to dress up, I know; Tom and Jack won’t go any place where they have to wear stiff collars.”
“I’m with them there,” rejoined Dan. “Had to get into one on Commencement Day, and never want to try another.”
“You see, I don’t care for some boys,” said the expectant hostess, confidentially. “All Tom’s and Jack’s friends are in long trousers. Some girls like that, but I don’t: they look too grown up, and they stand around and tease, and won’t play games, and are just horrid. You would play games, I’m sure.”