The Pennant
9781465686626
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
“Have you tried the fishing this summer?” “No; I’ve been too busy on the farm. This is the first day I have had when I could get away.” “It looks like rain. Is that the reason why you’ve dropped the shovel and the hoe?” “Partly. It’s more though, for the two dollars a day you’ve agreed to pay me for rowing you over the pond. I can’t pick that up on the farm, you know.” “You’ll soon be a rich man if you don’t look out. Ever thought what you’d do with all your money?” “Yes; I’ve thought a good lot about it. Perhaps ‘thinking’ about it is as far as I’ll ever get with it.” “How are you going to invest it?” “I’d like to get enough to help me go to school.” Walter Borden sat quietly erect in the stern of the rude skiff in which he was seated, lazily holding a rod in his hands from which a long line was paid out in the hope that some stray pickerel in Six Town Pond might be tempted by the bait displayed. A half-hour before the time when the conversation recorded above had taken place he and his companion, Dan Richards, had driven seven miles from the home of Walter’s grandfather, for the day, which was to be devoted to fishing in the pond, that extended three miles in length and in places was a mile or more wide. The little body of water was well known in the region for the fish which were said to be found in its depths, and Walter was convinced that the reports were not exaggerated, for in numerous summers preceding the one when this story opens he had tested the fact with varying degrees of success. Every summer Walter came from his home in New York to spend at least a part of his vacation on the farm of his Grandfather Sprague. The broad acres, the great roomy barns, the cattle and horses, the deep brook that sped swiftly through the pasture, even the old-fashioned farmhouse with its garret and its broad piazzas, to say nothing of the many low rooms with their numerous windows, had every one a place dear to Walter’s heart. From his earliest recollections, here was the place where his summer days had been passed. So eager was he to come, that when he was only ten years old his father and mother had yielded to his pleadings and seen him safely entrusted to the conductor and porter of the sleeping-car, and alone he had gone on the journey of three hundred miles to Rodman, the little village a half-mile distant from Grandfather Sprague’s home. It is true this is the form which Walter took to describe the place, although an ordinary observer would have said that the Sprague farm was half a mile from the village.
