"Hurrah for that!" exclaimed the young gentleman whose name, from that of his lawyer relative, had been shortened to mere "Fuz." And yet they were not so bad-looking a pair, as boys go. The elder, Joe,—a loud, hoarse-voiced, black-eyed boy of seventeen,—was, nevertheless, not much taller than his younger brother. The latter was as dark in eyes and hair as Joe, but paler, and with a sidewise glance of his unpleasant eyes, which suggested a perpetual state of inquiry whether anybody else had anything he wanted. The two boys were the very sort to play the meanest kind of practical jokes, and yet there was something of a resemblance between their mother and her sister, the mother of Ford and Annie Foster. There's really no accounting for some things, and the two Hart boys were, as yet, among the unaccountables.
Not one of that whole list of boys, however, inland or on the sea-shore, had any notion whatever of what things the future was getting ready for them. Dab Kinzer and Ford Foster, particularly, had no idea that the world contained such a place as Grantley, or such a landlady as Mrs. Myers.
As for Dabney, it would hardly be fair to leave him standing there any longer, with his two strings of fish in his hands, while Ford Foster volubly narrated the stirring events of the day.
"Are you sure the black boy was not hurt, Ford?" asked his kind-hearted mother.
"Hurt, mother? Why, he seems to be a kind of fish. They all know him, and went right past my hook to his all the while."
"Dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Foster, "I forgot. Annie, this is Ford's friend, Dabney Kinzer, our neighbor."
"Wont you shake hands with me, Mr. Kinzer?" asked Annie, with a malicious twinkle of fun in her merry blue eyes.
Poor Dabney! He had been in quite a "state of mind" for at least three minutes; but he would hardly have been his own mother's son if he had let himself be entirely "posed." Up rose his long right arm with the heavy string of fish at the end of it, and Annie's fun burst out into a musical laugh, just as her brother exclaimed:
"There, now, I'd like to see the other boy of your size can do that. Look here, Dab, where'd you get your training?"
"I mustn't drop the fish, you see," began Dab, but Ford interrupted him with: