All the romance of Joe’s nature stirred at the sight.  That was life.  They were living, and gaining their living, out in the free open, under the sun and sky, with the sea rocking beneath them, and the wind blowing on them, or the rain falling on them, as the chance might be.  Each day and every day he sat in a room, pent up with fifty more of his kind, racking his brains and cramming dry husks of knowledge, while they were doing all this, living glad and careless and happy, rowing boats and sailing, and cooking their own food, and certainly meeting with adventures such as one only dreams of in the crowded school-room.

Joe sighed.  He felt that he was made for this sort of life and not for the life of a scholar.  As a scholar he was undeniably a failure.  He had flunked in his examinations, while at that very moment, he knew, Bessie was going triumphantly home, her last examination over and done, and with credit.  Oh, it was not to be borne!  His father was wrong in sending him to school.  That might be well enough for boys who were inclined to study, but it was manifest that he was not so inclined.  There were more careers in life than that of the schools.  Men had gone down to the sea in the lowest capacity, and risen in greatness, and owned great fleets, and done great deeds, and left their names on the pages of time.  And why not he, Joe Bronson?

He closed his eyes and felt immensely sorry for himself; and when he opened his eyes again he found that he had been asleep, and that the sun was sinking fast.

It was after dark when he arrived home, and he went straight to his room and to bed without meeting any one.  He sank down between the cool sheets with a sigh of satisfaction at the thought that, come what would, he need no longer worry about his history.  Then another and unwelcome thought obtruded itself, and he knew that the next school term would come, and that six months thereafter, another examination in the same history awaited him.

CHAPTER VII

FATHER AND SON

On the following morning, after breakfast, Joe was summoned to the library by his father, and he went in almost with a feeling of gladness that the suspense of waiting was over.  Mr. Bronson was standing by the window.  A great chattering of sparrows outside seemed to have attracted his attention.  Joe joined him in looking out, and saw a fledgeling sparrow on the grass, tumbling ridiculously about in its efforts to stand on its feeble baby legs.  It had fallen from the nest in the rose-bush that climbed over the window, and the two parent sparrows were wild with anxiety over its plight.

“It ’s a way young birds have,” Mr. Bronson remarked, turning to Joe with a serious smile; “and I dare say you are on the verge of a somewhat similar predicament, my boy,” he went on.  “I am afraid things have reached a crisis, Joe.  I have watched it coming on for a year now—­your poor scholarship, your carelessness and inattention, your constant desire to be out of the house and away in search of adventures of one sort or another.”