(1878-). An American engineer and author. After his graduation from Stevens Institute Mr. Ames at first devoted himself entirely to engineering. He has been prominent in promoting the work of the Boy Scouts. Among his books are the following: The Mystery of Ram Island; Curly of the Circle Bar; Curly and the Aztec Gold; Pete the Cowpuncher; Under Boy Scout Colors; Shoe-Bar Stratton; The Emerald Buddha.
Realism and romance may be combined in a story of school life as well as in a story of any other kind. The Lion and the Mouse tells, in part, of ordinary, everyday events, and in part, of events that are distinctly out of the ordinary. The characters are the characters of school life,—two boys of entirely different natures but, after all, one at heart,—and subordinate characters who belong in the realm of real life. Many of the events of the story are commonplace enough. On this basis of reality there has been founded a story of quick event, a story of the unusual, entirely probable, centering around character and character development.
Big Bill Hedges scowled out of the locker-room window and groaned softly. There was something about that wide, unbroken sweep of snow which affected him disagreeably. If only it had been crisscrossed by footprints, or the tracks of snow-shoes or toboggans, he wouldn't have minded it nearly so much. But there it lay, flat, white, untrodden, drifting over low walls and turning the clumps of shrubbery into shapeless mounds. And of a sudden he found himself hating it almost as much as the dead silence of the endless, empty rooms about him. For it was the fourth day of the Christmas vacation, and, save the kitchen staff, there were only two other human beings in this whole great barracks of a place.
“And neither of them is really human,” grunted Hedges, turning restlessly from the window.
With a disgusted snort he recalled the behavior of those two, whom so far he had met only at meal-time. Mr. Wilson, the tutor left in charge of the school, consumed his food in a preoccupied sort of daze, rousing himself at rare intervals to make some plainly perfunctory remark. He was writing some article or other for the magazines, and it was all too evident that the subject filled his waking hours. And “Plug” Seabury, with his everlasting book propped up against a tumbler, was even worse. But then Hedges had never expected anything from him.
Crossing to his locker, the boy pulled out a heavy sweater, stared at it dubiously for a moment, and then let it dangle from his relaxed fingers. For once the thought of violent physical exertion in the open failed to arouse the least enthusiasm. Ever since the departure of the fellows, he had skeed and snow-shoed and tramped through the drifts—alone; and now the monotony was getting on his nerves. He flung the sweater back, and, slamming the locker door, strolled aimlessly out of the room.
One peep into the cold, lofty, empty “gym” effectually quelled his half-formed notion of putting in an hour or two on the parallel bars. “I'm lonesome!” he growled; “just—plumb—lonesome! It's the first time I've ever wished I didn't live in Arizona.”
But the thought of home and Christmas cheer and all the other vanished holiday delights was not one to dwell on now; he tried instead to appreciate how absurd it would have been to spend eight of his twelve holidays on the train.
A little further dawdling ended in his turning toward the library. He was not in the least fond of reading. Life ordinarily, with its constant succession of outdoor and indoor sports and games, was much too full to think of wasting time with a book unless one had to. But the thought occurred to him that to-day it might be a shade better than doing absolutely nothing.
Opening the door of the long, low-ceiled, book-lined room, which he had expected to find as desolately empty as the rest, he paused in surprise. On the brick hearth a log fire burned cheerfully, and curled up in an easy chair close to the hearth, was the slight figure of Paul Seabury.