“Why,” she said, stroking her pursed serious mouth with a slightly puzzled movement, “he says he’s goin’to Harvard. I reckon,” she said, in the same puzzled tone, “it’s all right—I guess he knows what he’s about. Says he’s made up his mind to go—I told him,” she said, and shook her head again, “that I’d send him for a year if he wanted to try it—an’then he’ll have to get out an’shift for himself. We’ll see,” she said. “I reckon it’s all right.”
“Harvard, eh?” said George Pentland. “Boy, you are flyin’high!… What you goin’to do up there?”
The boy, furiously red of face, squirmed, and finally stammered:
“Why… I… guess… I guess I’ll do some studying!”
“You guess you will!” roared George. “You’d damn well better do some studying—I bet your mother’ll take it out of your hide if she finds you loafin’on her money.”
“Why, yes,” the mother said, nodding seriously, “I told him it was up to him to make the most of this—”
“Harvard, eh!” George Pentland said again, slowly looking his cousin over from head to foot. “Son, you’re flyin’high, you are!… Now don’t fly so high you never get back to earth again!… You know the rest of us who didn’t go to Harvard still have to walk around upon the ground down here,” he said. “So don’t fly too high or we may not even be able to see you!”
“George! George!” said the young woman in a low tone, holding one hand to her mouth, and bending over to whisper loudly as she looked at her young brother. “Do you think anyone could fly very high with a pair of feet like that?”
George Pentland looked at the boy’s big feet for a moment, shaking his head slowly in much wonderment.
“Hell, no!” he said at length. “He’d never get off the ground!… But if you cut’em off,” he said, “he’d go right up like a balloon, wouldn’t he? Haw! Haw! Haw! Haw!” The great guffaw burst from him, and grinning with his solid teeth, he dug blindly at his thigh.
“Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi,” the sister jeered, seeing the boy’s flushed and angry face and prodding him derisively in the ribs—“This is our Harvard boy! k, k, k, k!”
“Don’t let’em kid you, son,” said George now in an amiable and friendly manner. “Good luck to you! Give’em hell when you get up there!… You’re the only one of us who ever had guts enough to go through college, and we’re proud of you!… Tell Uncle Bascom and Aunt Louise
