Gilbert was delighted, in a new place, to find a boy friend of his own age, and Cyril’s speedy attachment gratified his pride.  Gilbert was doing well these summer months.  The unceasing activity, the authority given him by his mother and sisters, his growing proficiency in all kinds of skilled labor, as he “puttered” about with Osh Popham or Bill Harmon in house and barn and garden, all this pleased his enterprising nature.  Only one anxiety troubled his mother; his unresigned and mutinous attitude about exchanging popular and fashionable Eastover for Beulah Academy, which seat of learning he regarded with unutterable scorn.  He knew that there was apparently no money to pay Eastover fees, but he was still child enough to feel that it could be found, somewhere, if properly searched for.  He even considered the education of Captain Carey’s eldest son an emergency vital enough to make it proper to dip into the precious five thousand dollars which was yielding them a part of their slender annual income.  Once, when Gilbert was a little boy, he had put his shoulder out of joint, and to save time his mother took him at once to the doctor’s.  He was suffering, but still strong enough to walk.  They had to climb a hilly street, the child moaning with pain, his mother soothing and encouraging him as they went on.  Suddenly he whimpered:  “Oh! if this had only happened to Ellen or Joanna or Addy or Nancy, I could have borne it so much better!”

There was a good deal of that small boy left in Gilbert still, and he endured best the economies that fell on the feminine members of the family.  It was the very end of August, and although school opened the first Monday in September, Mrs. Carey was not certain whether Gilbert would walk into the old-fashioned, white painted academy with the despised Beulah “hayseeds,” or whether he would make a scene, and authority would have to be used.

“I declare, Gilly!” exclaimed Mother Carey one night, after an argument on the subject; “one would imagine the only course in life open to a boy was to prepare at Eastover and go to college afterwards!  Yet you may take a list of the most famous men in America, and I dare say you will find half of them came from schools like Beulah Academy or infinitely poorer ones.  I don’t mean the millionaires alone.  I mean the merchants and engineers and surgeons and poets and authors and statesmen.  Go ahead and try to stamp your school in some way, Gilly!—­don’t sit down feebly and wait for it to stamp you!”

This was all very well as an exhibition of spirit on Mother Carey’s part, but it had been a very hard week.  Gilbert was sulky; Peter had had a touch of tonsillitis; Nancy was faltering at the dishwashing and wishing she were a boy; Julia was a perfect barnacle; Kathleen had an aching tooth, and there being no dentist in the village, Was applying Popham remedies,—­clove-chewing, roasted raisins, and disfiguring bread poultices; Bill Harmon had received no reply from Mr. Hamilton,