“Father! Arthur, Clyde, and Frank said that they would go with me.” Kenneth burst into the room with his news.
“That’s good,” was his father’s reply. “If the Morrows and Chauvets will let their sons go, that is, of course——”
“But you will speak a good word for me, won’t you, father?” Kenneth smiled at him confidently.
“Ye-e-es, if you think you must go.” The elder Ransom looked at his son rather sadly.
“Why, of course. I thought that it was all settled. Is anything the matter? What is it?” Kenneth was excited and worried; the possibility of a final refusal from his father had never occurred to him.
“Wait a minute, son.” Mr. Ransom pulled his boy down on the arm of his big leather easy chair. “The fact is, your mother and I have been talking over this projected cruise of yours, and—though you may not realize it—it is hard for us to have you, our youngest and last, go away upon so long and dangerous a trip.” He stopped for a moment and looked into the boy’s fast saddening face. “We promised that you should go, and go you shall, if you insist, but you are pretty young to undertake such a journey, and your mother and I thought that you might give it up for a while. We knew that you would be disappointed”—the father held up his hand to check the words which were just ready to pour out of the boy’s mouth—“and so we thought that we would try to make it up to you in some other way. If you will be willing to give up your project for a while, at least, your mother and I have decided to deed over this house and place to you, and your assigns, forever,” and he smiled at the legal phrase.
“Give me the house and grounds if I don’t go? Father, what can I say? I thank you awfully, but I would like to think it over a bit before I answer. It is rather sudden.” The boy grabbed his father’s hand, and then went upstairs to his own room.
He was touched, and very grateful, but grievously disappointed. He had set his heart on the trip, had persuaded his friends to go with him, and now he must give it all up. What seemed hardest of all, was that he would have to tell his companions that the whole thing was off. The photographs of boats that lined the walls of the room, and the plan of his own boat, laid out on the table, seemed a mockery to him. “Well, I won’t take the house any way,” he said to himself. “If they want me to stay as badly as that, I won’t go, of course; but——”
A minute or two later he came into the room where his father and mother were sitting reading.
“I’ll stay,” he said, standing before them. “I didn’t know you wanted me to, so much; but I can’t take the house; I don’t want to be paid to stay—but you’re terribly good to me.”