“Mother,” exclaimed Samantha, “it’s the very place Mr. Foster is going to send Ford to, and Frank Harley.”

“Exactly,” said Ham; “Mr. Hart spoke of a Mr. Foster,—­his brother-in-law,—­a lawyer.”

“Why,” said Keziah, “he’s living in our old house now.  Ford Foster is Dab’s greatest crony.  They’re the very people you met at the landing.”

“Yes, I’ve heard all that,” said Ham, “but somehow I hadn’t put the two things together.  Now, mother Kinzer, do you really mean Dab is to go?”

“Of course I do,” said she.

“Well, if that isn’t doing it easy!  Do you know, it’s about the nicest thing I’ve heard since I got here?”

“Except the barn,” said Dabney, unable to hold in any longer.  “Mother, may I stand on my head a while?”

“You’ll need all the head you’ve got,” said Ham.  “You won’t have much time to get ready.”

“He’ll have books enough after he gets there,” said Mrs. Kinzer decidedly.  “I’ll risk Dabney.”

“And they’ll make him give up all his slang,” added Samantha.

“Yes, Sam; when I come back I’ll talk nothing but Greek and Latin.  I’m getting French now from Ford, and Hindu from Frank Harley.  Then I know English, and slang, and Long-Islandish.  Think of one man with seven first-rate languages!”

But Dabney soon found himself unable to sit still, even at the breakfast-table.  Not that he got up hungry, for he had done his duty by Miranda’s cookery; but the house itself, big as it was, seemed too small to hold him, with all his new prospects swelling within him.  Perhaps, moreover, the rest of the family felt that they would be better able to discuss the important subject before them, after Dab had taken himself out into the open air; for none of them tried to stay his going.

“This beats dreaming, all hollow,” he said to himself, as he stood, with his hands in his pockets, half way down to the gate between the two gardens.  “Now I’ll see what can be done about that other matter.”

Two plans in one head, and so young a head as that?

Yes; and it spoke well for Dab’s heart, as well as his brains, that his plan number two was not a selfish one.  The substance of it came out in the first five minutes of the talk he had, a trifle later, with Ford and Frank, on the other side of the gate.

“Ford, you know there’s twenty dollars left of the money the Frenchman paid us for the bluefish.”

“Well, what of it?  Isn’t it yours?”

“One share of it’s mine.  The rest is yours and Dick’s.”

“He needs it more’n I do.”

“Ford, did you know Dick Lee was real bright?”

“’Cute little chap as ever I saw.  Why?”

“Well, he ought to go to school.”

“Why don’t he go?”

“He does, except in summer.  He might go to the academy, if they’d take him, and if he had money enough to go with.”

“Academy?  What academy?”