Boarding schools -- Juvenile fiction; Hockey -- Juvenile fiction; Teenage boys -- Juvenile fiction
Arnold’s house was only a five-minute ride from the station, and Toby,
to whom the city was unfamiliar and vastly entertaining, wished it
had been farther. His enjoyment of the sights, however, was somewhat
dampened by the seeming recklessness of the taxi-cab driver, and more
than once he started to his feet to be ready to meet death standing.
It kept Arnold quite busy pulling him back to the seat. Arnold’s Aunt
Alice, who, since his mother’s death, had kept house for Mr. Deering,
was the only one to welcome them, aside from the servants, for Arnold’s
father did not return from his down town office until the middle of
the afternoon. Toby was conducted by Arnold and a man-servant with
a striped waistcoat and a maid-servant with apron and cap and Aunt
Alice’s spaniel, San Toy, into an elevator, past two floors, along
a hall and at last into a great wonderful room that quite took his
breath away. It was all very exciting and confusing and jolly, and San
Toy, entering into the spirit of the occasion, barked so hard that
he lifted his front paws from the floor! And after the servants had
deposited the bags and coats and gone away, Arnold pulled Toby through
a door into his own room adjoining and they looked from the windows
over a vast expanse of trees and lawn and winding paths and shimmering
lakes which Arnold said was Central Park and which Toby accepted
as such and vowed that he could never tire of looking at it. After
luncheon they went for a walk there, but soon hurried back to the house
to meet Mr. Deering who had telephoned that he would be home an hour
earlier than usual.
Arnold’s father was so nice to Toby and seemed so glad to have him
there that Toby forgot much of the embarrassment that had affected
him on his arrival and actually found himself sitting down in a big
velvet-cushioned chair without, for once, wondering whether he would
damage it! Mr. Deering was rather stout, with grizzled hair and a most
carefully trimmed mustache. Toby fancied that he could be very crisp
and even stern in his office, but at home he was jovial and kindly
and one might easily have concluded that for the time at least he had
nothing in the world to do but invent and provide amusement for the two
eager-eyed boys just out of school. The big limousine car was summoned,
and every one, including Aunt Alice and San Toy, piled into it, and
were whisked away northward over smooth pavements, along a blue-gray
river, over a great bridge and into the country. Long before they
turned back the sun had gone down behind sullen clouds and when they
reached the town again the lights were twinkling down the long streets.
And then, to Arnold’s loudly expressed delight, when they got out of
the car at the house little flecks of snow were falling and the evening
had grown quite cold. From that time until dinner was ready Arnold made
frequent trips to the windows and always returned with the cheering
news that “it was still at it.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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