[CHAPTER VI]
CAL SETTLES DOWN
The next morning John William Boland began his life at Oak Park School. I give him his full title for the last time, for after his immersion in Willow Lake he was never anything but Cal among his friends, and it behooves us to follow the fashion.
It was customary for West House to proceed across the park to school in a body. The bell in School Hall rang warningly at a quarter to nine, but its tones fell on deaf ears. At ten minutes to nine the boys gathered their books together and began their search for caps. At five minutes to nine they raced pell-mell out of the house and through the park, usually arriving in the corridor of School Hall just as the last strokes of the second bell died away. But this morning, being the first day of the term, the eight boys started promptly with the first bell and passed through the park quite leisurely. Willow Lake didn’t look at all like the pool in which they had disported themselves last night. In the moonlight it had seemed to Cal big and mysterious. Today, with the sunlight pouring down on it and a little breeze rippling the surface, it resolved itself into a small and quite commonplace pond, oval in shape, neatly margined with smooth turf and shaded with oaks and willows, the latter in places dipping their drooping branches into the water.
“I saw a whopping big trout in her last Spring,” said Spud, leaning over the bridge and gazing longingly into the channel below. “I’m going to try for him some day.”
“Better not let anyone catch you,” said Sandy.
“Aren’t you allowed to fish here?” Cal asked.
“No, nor in the Mill Pond back of the Hall. They’re full of fish, too. Some of the East House fellows fished in the Mill Pond one morning last Spring and got caught at it. They got fits from Horace. They got up at about half-past four and thought no one would see them, but Eliza piped them from her window.”
“Who is Eliza?” asked Cal.