“No, we don’t think you are a baby,” his father answered, “but we do think you are unreliable, and that you don’t do your school work faithfully, and you don’t do the things we ask you to do around the place. How about that dead apple tree you were going to cut up this week?”
“Oh, gee! I forgot it,” Bennie said.
“Exactly. You forgot it. You evidently forgot to study your history and your Latin, this week, too, I gather from what the principal told me to-day. Now, when you act this way, all I say is, why should I let you go to Oregon, or anywhere else? What have you done to show me that you’ll make real use of your opportunities? Your friend Bob Chandler, now, I’d trust. He’d keep his eyes open and learn a lot, because he learns every day at home.”
Bennie hung his head. Then he looked up at his father.
“Say, Pa, if I get good marks all the rest of the year, and if I come to the bank every Saturday morning and help you, and if I prune all the apple trees, may I go to Oregon?”
“How do you know your Uncle Billy wants you?” his mother demanded.
“I bet I can fix that all right. Say, Pa, can I?”
“You get the good marks for a month, son, and work on the apple trees, and come to the bank—and at the end of the month we’ll see,” his father answered.
“Gee, that’s easy!” Bennie shouted.
After dinner he started to call up Spider and suggest going to the movies. He got as far as the telephone, in fact, and then hesitated. It was a hard fight for a minute, but he won out. Slowly he turned away from the ’phone, walked up to his own room, got out his textbooks, and began to study.