"Will you bring it back to school with you?" asked Harry.
"Oh! yes, if Miss Ware doesn't say no."
"Well, Tom," cried Bertie, "where are you going to spend your holidays?"
"I am going to stay here," answered Tom in a very forlorn voice.
"Here—at school—oh, dear! Why can't you go home?"
"I can't go home to India," answered Tom.
"Nobody said you could. But haven't you any relatives anywhere?"
Tom shook his head. "Only in India," he said sadly.
"Poor fellow! That's hard luck for you. I'll tell you what it is, boys, if I couldn't go home for the holidays, especially at Christmas—I think I would just sit down and die."
"Oh, no, you wouldn't," said Tom. "You would get ever so homesick, but you wouldn't die. You would just get through somehow, and hope something would happen before next year, or that some kind fairy would—"