"I can't say about that," said Mr. Hart. "I half made her a promise"--

"That we'd board there?" exclaimed Fuz rebelliously.

"Now, boys," said their mother, in a gentle voice, that sounded a little like good Mrs. Foster's; but Joe sustained his brother with,--

"Prison-fare, and not half enough of it. I just won't stand it another winter!"

"I'm not so sure it will be necessary, after all," said their father, who seemed to have dismissed Annie's grievance from his mind for the present. "Your cousin Ford is sure to go; and I'm almost certain of another boy, besides the missionary's son. If she gets a few others herself, her house'll be full enough, and you can board somewhere else."

"Hurrah for that!" shouted Fuz. "And, if the new house doesn't feed us well, we'll tear it down."

"If you don't tear ours down before you go, I'll be satisfied. Maria, you must write to your sister, and smooth the matter over. Boys will be boys, and I wouldn't like to have any coolness spring up. Mr. Foster'll understand it."

That was very nearly all that was said about it, and the two boys evidently had had no need for any hesitation in coming in to breakfast.

They were not so bad-looking a pair, as boys go; although it may be few other people would have seen so much to admire in them as their mother did.

Joe, the elder, was a loud, hoa.r.s.e-voiced, black-eyed boy, of seventeen or thereabouts, with a perpetual grin on his face, as if he had discovered in this world nothing but a long procession of things to be laughed at. Foster, so named after his lawyer relative, was a year and a half younger, but nearly as tall as Joe. He was paler, but with hair and eyes as dark, and he wore a sort of habitual side-look, as if his mind were all the while inquiring if anybody within sight happened to have any thing he wanted.

They both bore a strong likeness to their father, only they missed something bluff and hearty in his accustomed manner; and they each had also a little suggestion of their mother, that did not, however go so far as to put anybody in mind of their aunt Foster.

n.o.body need have failed to see, at all events, after watching one or two of their glances at each other, that they were the very boys to play the meanest kind of practical jokes when they could do it safely. There is really no accounting for boys; and Joe and Fuz, therefore, might fairly be set down among the "unaccountables."

There was no sort of wonder that their easy-going mother and their joke-admiring father should be quite willing to have them spend three-quarters of the year at boarding-school, and as much as possible of the remainder somewhere else than "at home."

After Mr. Hart went out to his business that morning, and Mrs. Hart set herself about her usual duties, Joe and Fuz took with them into the street the whole Grantley question.

"We'll have to go, Fuz."

"Of course. But we must have more to eat, and more fun, than we had last time."

"Ford's coming, is he? The little prig! We'll roast him."

"So we will that young missionary."

"Look out about him, Joe, while he's at our house. He's coming right here, you know."

"Don't you be afraid. His folks are old friends of mother's. We'll let up on him till we get him safe to Grantley."

"Then we'll fix him."

They had plots and plans enough to talk about; but neither they, nor any of the boys they named, nor any of the other boys they did not name, had the least idea of what the future really had in store for them. Dab Kinzer and Ford Foster, in particular, had no idea that the world contained such a place as Grantley, or such a landlady as Mrs. Myers.

They had as little suspicion of them as they had had of finding Annie Foster in the sitting-room that day, when they walked in with their famous strings of fish.

Ford kissed his sister, but that operation hardly checked him for an instant in his voluble narrative of the stirring events of his first morning on the bay. There was really little for anybody else to do but to listen, and it was worth hearing.

There was no sort of interruption on the part of the audience; but the moment Ford paused for breath his mother said,--

"Are you sure the black boy was not hurt, Ford?"

"Hurt, mother? Why, he seems to be a kind of black-fish. The rest all know him, and they went right past my hook to his, all the while."

"Dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Foster: "I forgot. Annie, this is Ford's friend Dabney Kinzer, our neighbor."

"Won't you shake hands with me, Mr. Kinzer?" said Annie, with a malicious twinkle of fun in her merry blue eyes.

Poor Dabney! He had been in quite a "state of mind" for at least three minutes; but he would hardly have been his own mother's son if he had let himself be entirely "posed." Up rose his long right arm, with the heavy string of fish at the end of it; and Annie's fun broke out into a musical laugh, just as her brother exclaimed,--

"There now, I'd like to see the other boy of your size can do that. Look here, Dab, where'd you get your training?"

"I mustn't drop the fish, you see," began Dab; but Ford interrupted him with,--

'No, indeed! You've given me half I've got, as it is. Annie, have you looked at the crabs? You ought to have seen d.i.c.k Lee, with a lot of 'em gripping in his hair."

"In his hair?"

"When he was down through the bottom of his boat. They'd have eaten him up if they'd had a chance. You see, he's no sh.e.l.l on him."

"Exactly," said Annie, as Dab lowered his fish. "Well, Dabney, I wish you would thank your mother for me, for sending my trunk over. Your sisters too. I've no doubt we shall be very neighborly."

It was wonderfully pleasant to be called by his first name by so very pretty a young lady, and yet it seemed to bring up something curious into Dabney Kinzer's throat.

"She considers me a mere boy, and she means I'd better take my fish right home," was the next thought that came to him; and he was right, to a fraction. So the great lump in his throat took a very wayward and boyish form, and came out as a reply, accompanied by a low bow,--

"I will, thank you. Good-afternoon, Mrs. Foster. I'll see you to-night, Ford, about Monday and the yacht. Good-afternoon, Annie."

And then he marched out with his fish.

"Mother, did you hear him call me 'Annie'?"

"Yes; and I heard you call him 'Dabney.'"

"But he's only a boy "--

"I don't care," exclaimed Ford. "He's an odd fellow, but he's a good one. Did you see how wonderfully strong he is in his arms? I couldn't lift these fish at arm's-length, to save my life."

He knew, for he had been trying his best with his own.

It was quite likely that Dab Kinzer's rowing, and all that sort of thing, had developed in him greater strength of muscle than even he himself was aware of; but for all that he went home with his very ears tingling.

"Could she have thought me ill-bred or impertinent?" he muttered to himself.

Thought? About him?

Poor Dab Kinzer! Annie Foster had so much else to think of just then; for she was compelled to go over, for Ford's benefit, the whole story of her tribulations at her uncle's, and the many rudenesses of Joe Hart and his brother Fuz.

"They ought to be drowned," said Ford indignantly.