“Vacation’s only six weeks off now,” Potter said as they walked up to the house. “Ain’t that great! I hate school anyway.”
“Ah, Potter, when you are doing so well at it! Milly told me about the debates. She said you were fine in them.”
The monthly school debates were a point of pride with him, and he betrayed a momentary embarrassment. He had quite lost himself in the vainglory of winning two of them in succession, or of being on the winning side both times. He had regretted that while they were in progress, especially while he was on his feet, everybody he knew had not been in the audience. So many people were not. The thing that he feared in talking about them to Ellen was that he would reveal his satisfaction. So Milly had been gossiping about them outside? That pleased him. Milly was in the class below him, which sat in the same room.
He recovered his composure and spoke as though of an ordinary matter.
“Pshaw, the debates ain’t really school. They’re different.... But look, Ellen, all the lots around here are almost forests of weeds in the summer. It’s great! You can hide in them, and everything. They get over six feet high. And there’s woods only a mile out west there, to swim and camp in. If you have time we can walk there some day.”
Ellen’s face brightened at the prospect.
“But it gets hot here in the summer,” he went on, “awful hot—not like Winnipeg. You won’t like that.”
“Oh, I’ve lived in N’Orleans. It’s lots hotter there.”
“Yes, that’s so. That’s way down south, ain’t it? I always think of you coming from Winnipeg. Bennet talks about it all the time. He’s a Britisher all right.”
Ellen replied warmly.