For answer Tom seized the box gingerly and hurled it out the nearest window. Dr. Smith appeared with a bottle of witch-hazel, and Tom, dispensing with his pajamas, received medical assistance. After that order and quiet were restored only with much difficulty. Tom went elsewhere to continue his interrupted slumber, hugging the bottle of witch-hazel to his breast, but he couldn’t get beyond the gibes of his companions. They sat on the edge of his new bunk and pointed out the moral to him, which, according to them, was to the effect that selfishness had been justly rewarded. And Tom, rubbing and grimacing, had no spirit left with which to defend himself. “It proves,” declared Dan, “that a fellow can have too many ants!” Tom only groaned, whether at the pun or at his pain they didn’t know. CHAPTER IX STARTS OUT WITH POETRY, HAS TO DO WITH A BEETLE, AND ENDS WITH A PENALTY Nelson read with a nod of approval. “And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.” He was sitting at the table on the porch of Birch Hall, and the lines that pleased him were burned on a wooden tablet affixed to the big stone chimney across the room. His gaze, returning from the quotation, fell on Tom, who at a neighboring table was, like Nelson, writing home. One of Tom’s legs was twined around the camp-stool upon which he was seated, as a morning-glory vine twines about a post. The other leg was stretched straight ahead, as though seeking inspiration at a distance. His forehead was puckered with wrinkles until it resembled the surface of a washboard, and he chewed ravenously at the tip of his pen. Nelson smiled, and let his gaze wander back to his own task only to have it prove truant again, attracted by the scene at his left. The porch overhung the hill, and from where he sat he looked into the swaying branches of the trees. Between them, like turquoises set in a field of emerald and chrysoprase, shone patches of the lake ruffled to a tender blue by the breeze that sang amid the trees. Near-by a silver poplar flashed the under surface of its leaves into the sunlight, so that they seemed to have been dipped in pale gold. A gray squirrel chattered and scolded on a neighboring limb, and all about birds sang blithely. Nelson sighed, and brought his eyes resolutely back to the half-written letter before him. It wasn’t a morning for letter-writing; the woods called too loudly; his thoughts would stray. “Oh, hang it!” exclaimed Tom, “I don’t know what to write!” “Did you tell them about the ants last night?” asked Nelson innocently. “You bet I did! And say, one of those bites still aches like the mischief. I never thought ants could nip like that!” “You probably rolled over on them; that’s enough to make any self-respecting ant angry.” “Oh, dry up and blow away! What are you writing about?”