“‘Something accomplished, something done
To earn a night’s repose!’”
Of course the Faculty didn’t remain long in ignorance of the incident and the next morning Mr. Collins read the School a short but eloquent lecture on the subject of Behavior in Public. But the matter ended there. A Second Class boy named Farnham, seeking Mr. Collins’ room the evening before by appointment, had found the host and Mr. Austin, another of the instructors, laughing loudly, and although they had sobered down instantly when they had heard his knock on the partly opened door, Farnham had overheard enough to convince him that the subject of their mirth had been the tent episode. When this had percolated through School, as it very shortly did, all fear of punishment faded. Mr. Collins wasn’t formidable when he laughed.
A few days later Mr. Pennimore’s retinue of servants came down from the city and opened Sound View for the summer. Gerald spent an hour at the station that morning between recitations watching the stablemen unload the horses and traps and hobnobbing with Higgins, the chauffeur, who, having driven his car down by road, was taking a hand in the unloading. In the afternoon Gerald went over home and patronized the housekeeper until the good soul was quite in awe of him. The house was all ready for Mr. Pennimore’s arrival, and that gentleman was expected in two or three days. Gerald spent a half hour in his own rooms going through his belongings. Strange to say, many things which had been precious to him not much more than six months before to-day held no attractions. Very soon he had a pile of toys and playthings in the middle of the floor and was directing their removal and destruction. He got his stamp albums down and looked through them listlessly, replacing them with a frown.
“Any fellow can collect stamps,” he muttered. “I’m going to give those away to someone. Maybe Harry would like them.”
Then he climbed the stairs to the gymnasium which his father had had arranged for him three years before and looked about it superciliously. It wasn’t much like the gymnasium at school, he thought. He did the giant swing on the rings, pulled once or twice at the chest-weights and turned his back on the room.
“Good enough for a kid,” he muttered as he went downstairs, “but I won’t use it much, I guess.” He looked at his watch, found he had still time to reach the field before baseball practice ended, and took his departure.
Two days later, just at noon, as he was crossing from Oxford to Clarke the boom of a gun reached him. Hurrying to the edge of The Prospect, he looked seaward. There, circling in toward Sound View, a little cloud of smoke still wreathing at her bow, was a great white steam yacht. It was the Princess! With beating heart Gerald watched. The big boat slowed down, an anchor splashed into the sea, and the jar and jangle of the chain running through the hawse-hole came to him. Amidship a boom swung outward, a little launch was lowered from deck to water, white-clad figures moved here and there, and then a form in dark clothes went down the steps, and—
But now Gerald was racing down the terrace, across the bridge and along the wood path to meet his father.