“I’ll teacher’s pet you!” Bennie laughed, finally letting him up.
At the end of the second month Mr. Capen told him he could write to his uncle, and if his uncle would let him come to Oregon and take him on one of his mountain trips, Bennie could go—“providing, of course, you pass all your examinations in June,” his father added. “It’s up to you.”
“I’ll pass all right!” Bennie said, joyfully. “And say, Pa, if Spider’s father’ll let him go, do you suppose Uncle Bill would mind if he went with me? Gee, it would be great to have old Spider along!”
“I’m sure Uncle Billy wouldn’t mind, and I know your mother would feel a lot easier about your going,” Mr. Capen said. “I’ll see Spider’s father today.”
“Golly, you’re some dad!” cried Bennie.
“Well, I feel I’ve got more of a son than I had two months ago,” said Mr. Capen.
Bennie hadn’t seen his Uncle Bill (a younger brother of his mother’s) for three or four years. He lived in Portland, Oregon, where he was a very successful doctor, and every summer he took a vacation in the mountains, to get himself fit for his winter grind. Bennie remembered him as a tall, strong, good-natured man, who always came to see Mrs. Capen on his rare trips East, and always talked to Bennie about what fun it would be to show him “a real country”—meaning Oregon. Bennie liked him, but it was hard, at that, to sit down in cold blood and invite yourself for a visit, and, still worse, to invite somebody else to go with you! Bennie began, and tore up, two or three letters before he got one that he thought would do. This is what he sent:
Dear Uncle Bill:
The last time you were East you pulled a lot of talk about showing me “a real country.” I guess you never thought I could get that far to see it, so you were safe. But I’ve been plugging hard this winter and got such high marks that Pa thought I was sick and Ma sent for the doctor, and he says I need a change or I’ll know too much. So I’m all ready to be shown that country of yours. And there’s a chum of mine here, an awful good scout, Bob Chandler (Spider, we call him), who doesn’t believe Oregon is so much, either, and he’d go along, too, if you asked him real polite. Besides, if he came, Ma would let me come. Ma thinks if I go alone a Pullman porter will think I’m a dress suitcase and pull me off the train at Omaha, or something. And I guess it’s kind of fresh my suggesting this about Spider’s going, but he’s an awful good scout, and he and I have been climbing Monument Mountain on a rope. Shall I bring my rope? It is 100 feet long, and we boiled it on the stove so it is soft. If we do come what clothes shall we bring?
Your loving nephew, Bennie.
P.S.—Mother and Father are both well and send their love.
B.
The chances are that before this letter was sent, Bennie’s mother had written to her brother. But if she did, Bennie didn’t know it. He mailed his letter, and counted the days it would take to reach Portland. In twice that time he ought to have an answer. At the end of the week he and Spider were haunting the post-office.
Then, one day, the answer came. Bennie tore it open, and this is what he read: