“They’ll lump you if you are not careful,” warned the doorkeeper. “Rub your head again with the towel, and look sharp about it.”
“They’ll look silly if they come interferin’ ’long o’ me,” said Bobbie, with the towel over his head. “I ain’t like a kid.”
“Yes, you are,” said the man sagely. “Not only have you got a great deal to learn, but, moreover, you’ve got a great deal to forget. And touching this bath business, that you seem to kick against so, p’raps you’ll be interested to hear that in Collingwood you’ll have to wash just as regular as you’ve washed here, and you’ll get your two baths a week without fail.”
“Go on!” said the boy, uneasily.
“I’m telling you the truth, my lad. Your foster-parents ’ll see to that. Your new father works in the carpenter’s shop, and he’s what you may call a hard man.”
“If he comes the hard business with me,” muttered the boy, truculently, “I’ll dam well show him.”
He was presently, after a kiss from the wife, which he received shamefacedly, conducted out into the broad, gravelled roadway dividing the two rows of red-roofed cottages; stop made at a clematis-covered house which bore its title over the doorway. There his new foster-mother appeared and eyed him critically, looked with great care at his head and eyes, and the hour being in school-time and the cottage therefore without family, she took him over the rooms, showing him with pride the prints from Christmas numbers on the walls, the white-floored, white-tabled dining-room, the comfortable sitting-room with its illustrated weekly papers, and the kitchen and scullery, where everything shone so that mirrors would have been a superfluity; afterwards up the broad staircase to the dormitories, each with seven red-counterpaned beds, and a floor that gave promise of some day disappearing entirely under the attacks of scrubbing from two long boys on their knees.
“And some day,” said the foster-mother, generously, “if you grow up a good boy and become a half-timer, you shall be one of the two lads to stay at home and help me with the ’ouse work.”
“No great catch,” remarked Bobbie, grimly.
“Ah!” said the foster-mother, “you think so now; but you wait.”