“Thank you, boys! Come and see me this afternoon—will you?” said Mrs. Hallock, and gathering the lines in her hands, without waiting to hear their answer, she drove rapidly on, anxious to spread the glad tidings on board the tug.
Never in all his life had Neptune been so urged before to hurry over the well-known road to the town wharf. He went flying down the hill and out upon the wharf, Kate’s handkerchief waving as they went. But what did it mean, that instead of the tug starting, everybody on board was hurrying to get off? It meant that the good news had arrived a moment earlier. Neptune was duly turned around by the head on the narrow landing-place, and permitted to pursue his way more leisurely to the railroad station, to await the arrival of the next train from New Haven.
When it came up to the little station, a stranger would have thought—well, there is no telling what he would have thought; for the platform was solid with men and boys, while here and there, amid the number, peeped out a gladly tearful face of woman or little girl. In the phaeton, behind the station, Mrs. Hallock waited until, held by the grasp of his father’s hand upon his arm, Frank came around to smile and kiss and say how glad he was to be safe again.
“Mother, I think it’s done Frank good,” said Kate, aware in some mysterious manner that a change had come to her brother, even before he had told out the half of his story of the fog, and the cold, and the hunger, and the goodness of everybody on the Blue Bell.
O, that was the true Thanksgiving Day at the house on the Point. Mrs. Dobson was there for dinner, and Harry Cornwall; and Josh Dobson was remembered, for the part he acted, by all the turkey-bones a reasonable dog could eat; and everybody was just as happy as happy could be, and not one disagreeable word was spoken by anybody from the moment Frank was found until the last good night was said.
Chapter XVII.
After a night of blissful rest in his own bed at home, Frank wrote with absolute good will to Mr. North, delivering over to his ownership the Clover, then in care of a boatman at Long Wharf, in New Haven.
Frank was a happy, contented hero for a whole week, petted and noticed by whomsoever he was met. At the end of that time he went from this condition of affairs to be only “the new boy from the country” in General Russell’s school.
We may not stay to give the history of Frank’s school days, nor of the trials he there met. At Christmas he was expected home.