Chapter XXXIV: Summer Plans

Mr. Talbot had spoken correctly; Hervey went to Chestnut Hill Military Academy. Also Hervey had spoken correctly; he escaped. He was sent back and remained till the Christmas holidays. It is not pleasant watching a caged squirrel and we shall not follow his troubled career when he marched in line and saluted and went “in formation” to Chestnut Hill village twice a week, once to church and once to the movies.

Under the influence of Mrs. Walton and the Christmas spirit, Mr. Walton allowed Hervey to return to school in Farrelton after the holidays and Chestnut Hill saw him no more. But he remembered it and walked a fairly straight and narrow path till early summer. Only once did he fall from grace and that was when he hiked to Centervale in quest of a retired sailor who was said to be an expert at tattooing. He did not find the artist, but he got a ride in an airplane to Commonwealth landing field (twenty miles out of his way) and had to sleep in a shed that night.

As summer approached, Hervey’s home presented unmistakable signs of the tremendous enterprise of his old-fashioned, home-keeping step-parents--the long projected trip to Europe. For the first time, Mr. Walton would entrust his book and stationery store to a competent young assistant, Snoopy Seeley as Hervey called him, because he conscientiously saw to it that the girls attended to their work. There were no late dances in Walton’s Book and Stationery Store after the advent of Snoopy Seeley. But for all this young man’s horrible dependability, poor Mr. and Mrs. Walton contemplated their vacation with the true home-keeper’s dread and anxiety.

“Well, there are no worries about Hervey, anyway,” said Mrs. Walton. “Temple Camp is the one place where he really did seem to get on. I’d be dreadfully nervous about going if it weren’t for that. I do believe you and I are more nervous about this than Hervey is.”

“We are no such experienced travelers as he is,” said Mr. Walton.

“You’re going to talk to him, aren’t you?”

Mr. Walton talked to him and found that so far as Hervey was concerned everything was quite all right; he would have been glad to give his permission for them to go to Mars. He was not the one to curb the freedom of any aspiring soul.

“And you won’t mind being alone; I mean up at Temple Camp?” Mr. Walton asked him.

“Sure thing, go as far as you like,” said Hervey. Did he recall the circumstances under which he had been sent home from camp? And if so, did not his position now trouble him the least bit? It would be hard to say. “Sure, I’ll stay up there till you come back,” he said; “you should worry.”

“I’m sure I will,” said poor Mrs. Walton.

“You don’t think it’s necessary for me to write up there?” Mr. Walton asked.

“Sure not,” said Hervey gayly, “they know me.”

“Well then, I’ll give you a check for July and I’ll mail them another check on the first of August. I guess that will be all right.”

“Posilutely O. K.,” said Hervey. He was nothing if not compliant and accommodating.

Mr. Walton, always thoughtful and deliberate, paused considering. “I think it would be best for you to go up next Saturday, then we’ll know you’re settled there before we go.”

“Believe me, I’m never settled,” said Hervey.

“Well, as near settled as it’s possible for you to be; that better?” Mr. Walton queried.

“Sure thing.”

“Then he wouldn’t be able to go to Boston and see us sail,” said Mrs. Walton.

“That’s where you said something,” said Hervey. “I’m going to Boston, that’s settled.”

“No, I think we’ll settle it the other way,” Mr. Walton reflected. “You better go up next Saturday, Herve. Boston is too slow for you anyway. Seeing folks sail isn’t much pleasure.”

“I bet I could be a stowaway, hey?”

“You go up to camp next Saturday,” said Mr. Walton. “That councilor, what’s his name----”

“Wainwright, he’s a nice feller,” said Hervey blithely. He bore no malice.

“Well then, let’s see, I’ll give you a check for three weeks in July and you can tell Mr. Wainwright I’ll send another check the first of August. Now when you get up there if everything isn’t all right you can write me here. But it isn’t as if you were going to a strange place; they all know you,” he added.

Hervey made a flourishing motion with both hands as if to say that all was well, that peace and perfect understanding prevailed. “They know me and I know them,” he said with the greatest of good cheer.