He didn’t think he was going to like Oak Park School and regretted that he hadn’t held out for one of the institutions which his own choice had fallen upon when the little white cottage at West Bayport had been inundated for weeks with school catalogues. He recalled one in particular, Seaview Academy, an imposing brick building fronting the ocean, backed with a jolly looking forest and adorned on all sides by winding paths sprinkled with boys and strange-shaped flower beds blooming tropically. But Seaview had been quite out of the question with its seven hundred dollar tuition fee, and, like several others which had caught his fancy, had been set aside as something beautiful but impossible.
There had been a time when the Bolands were prosperous. That was before Captain Jonathan Boland, master and half-owner of the fishing schooner Patriot, had been lost with all hands on the Grand Banks and Mrs. Boland and John and his sister Nan had been left with only the small house overlooking the harbor and a very little money. The disaster had occurred when John was ten and his sister a year younger, and since that time the family had often had hard work to make ends meet. John and Nan attended public school, and in the summer the former found what work he could. The wages weren’t large, but they helped. One summer he had obtained a place in a sail-loft, and another year had nailed “flats” into boxes at the fish house. But the best summer of all had been the one just past, when he had served as one of the crew of three on the little auxiliary sloop Emma Boyd, which sailed or chugged about the harbor selling water to the fishing boats.
It was the death of Uncle Thomas that had altered the boy’s prospects. Uncle Thomas had been his mother’s brother, a mysterious, seldom seen old man who had lived in Maine and who, when he decided to die at the respectable age of seventy-odd, had left a legacy of a thousand dollars to his sister. News of it had reached Mrs. Boland in the late winter and not for an instant had there been any doubt in her mind as to the investment of the money. It was to go toward her boy’s education. It wouldn’t take him through college, of course, but, with care, it might prepare him for it; and once old enough to find employment at a man’s wages, he could, she was certain, with the Lord’s help, manage the rest himself. Mrs. Boland had always been a firm believer in trusting to the Lord, and so far she had never been disappointed.
John was to study hard and prepare himself for college in three years. Neither himself nor his mother nor Sister Nan doubted his ability to do this; Nan least of all, perhaps, for to her John was something just short of super-human. Had the legacy been larger John could have afforded another year at school, but with a thousand dollars only to draw on, and tuition at good schools seldom being less than three hundred a year, you can see that three years was bound to be his limit. So the legacy was placed untouched in the savings bank and the entire family began a systematic study of preparatory schools. In the end Oak Park had won the privilege of enrolling John William Boland among its pupils. The tuition at Oak Park was three hundred dollars a year, a price made possible by endowments from former students. It was only a dollar and twenty cents from West Bayport—you see the Bolands reckoned distance in terms of carfares!—and it possessed in addition most of the advantages offered by larger and more expensive schools. I think, though, that it was the phrase in the advertisement alluding to moral character that decided Mrs. Boland. John remembered every word of that advertisement yet; it had been read a dozen times while awaiting the school catalogue.
“Oak Park School, North Woodfield, Mass. Preparatory School for Boys. Estab. 1876. Ideal equipment for health and study. Twenty-four acres of elevated ground one hour from Boston. Special attention given to boys of fifteen and under. Enrollment limited to sixty and only boys of high moral character accepted. For further information address Dr. Horace Mitchell Webster, Principal.”
John’s application had been forwarded in June and a month later he had learned that it had been accepted. From that moment he had looked forward to this day. And now—why, now he was dragging unwilling feet along the road and heartily wishing himself back at home! It was extremely unreasonable of him, he knew, but somehow he just couldn’t help it. It was not only unreasonable, it was ungrateful besides. And while he was telling himself so, with a terrific frown on his brown forehead, the school suddenly appeared before him.
A neat stone wall, flat-topped and half-hidden with ivy, began beside him and went on to an ornamental iron gateway. Beyond the wall was a broad expanse of velvety green turf divided by drives and walks which led to the four buildings in sight. The nearest of these was a low two-story building of buff colored brick and limestone trimming. John guessed it to be the gymnasium, and he was right. It was full of windows, most of which were open, and the red slate roof looked very hot in the sunlight. Near the gymnasium and further from John was a handsome building of three stories, the lower of weathered shingles and the upper two of creamy-hued plaster between beams. There were two entrances, a square porch before each, and on the porches and steps were many boys. Still further away was an old building of red brick, making no pretence of architectural attractiveness and draped in ivy. This was the recitation hall doubtless. And quite a distance beyond the three foremost buildings a fourth peered around the corner of the center one. It too was of shingle and stucco and beams, but it was quite small. Beyond the school grounds there was a fringe of trees, and back of that the country rose and fell in meadows and wooded hillsides.
The policeman had said that West House was farther than the school itself and John hesitated at the gate. Then his gaze crossed the road and there was another gate, a rustic one, with the sign “West House” above it. So he turned his back on the school buildings and went through the smaller gate and followed a neat gravelled path that dipped down to a wooden bridge. Above the bridge was an oval pond half an acre in extent. Under and below it a little brook ran, fern-fringed and murmurous, to disappear in a patch of willows and alders beyond. This was the park from which the school took its name. The path led upward again and wound westward through a grove of oaks. Here and there shrubs and plants, their leaves drooping and wilted, lined the path. With the exception of the Public Gardens in Boston, John had never seen anything as beautiful as that far-reaching expanse of turfed ground with the great wide-spreading oak trees throwing their pools of dark green shadow on the grass. There seemed to be no limits to the park, for as far as he could see his vision was shut in by leaf and branch and trunk. Once he thought he spied the top of a red chimney through the greenery, but he wasn’t certain of that. He was certain, however, that Oak Park School exceeded his expectations as far as attractiveness went, and he found so much pleasure in following the path and viewing the new vistas of sun and shade that opened up before him at every turn that he quite forgot his former despondency and was so absorbed that when, quite unexpectedly, the trees stopped and a white cottage with green blinds appeared before him he was quite astounded.