“I forgot I had a bet with John until I had waked him,” said Billy. “He bet me five last night I couldn’t find it, and I took him. Of course, after that I had no right to ask him anything, and he thought I was funny. He said I couldn’t find out if the landlady’s hair was her own. I went him another five on that.”
“How do you say we ought to go?” said Bertie, presently.
They were now crossing the Albany tracks at Allston. “We’re going to get there,” said Bertie; and he turned the black gelding toward Brookline and Jamaica Plain.
The enchanting day surrounded them. The suburban houses, even the suburban street-cars, seemed part of one great universal plan of enjoyment. Pleasantness so radiated from the boys’ faces and from their general appearance of clean white flannel trousers and soft clean shirts of pink and blue that a driver on a passing car leaned to look after them with a smile and a butcher hailed them with loud brotherhood from his cart. They turned a corner, and from a long way off came the sight of the tower of Memorial Hall. Plain above all intervening tenements and foliage it rose. Over there beneath its shadow were examinations and Oscar. It caught Billy’s roving eye, and he nudged Bertie, pointing silently to it. “Ha, ha!” sang Bertie. And beneath his light whip the gelding sprang forward into its stride.
The clocks of Massachusetts struck eleven. Oscar rose doubtfully from his chair in Billy’s study. Again he looked into Billy’s bedroom and at the empty bed. Then he went for a moment and watched the still forcibly sleeping John. He turned his eyes this way and that, and after standing for a while moved quietly back to his chair and sat down with the leather wallet of notes on his lap, his knees together, and his unblocked shoes touching. In due time the clocks of Massachusetts struck noon.
In a meadow where a brown amber stream ran, lay Bertie and Billy on the grass. Their summer coats were off, their belts loosened. They watched with eyes half closed the long water-weeds moving gently as the current waved and twined them. The black gelding, brought along a farm road and through a gate, waited at its ease in the field beside a stone wall. Now and then it stretched and cropped a young leaf from a vine that grew over the wall, and now and then the want wind brought down the fruit blossoms all over the meadow. They fell from the tree where Bertie and Billy lay, and the boys brushed them from their faces. Not very far away was Blue Hill, softly shining; and crows high up in the air came from it occasionally across here.