boys all said so except Dick Lee. He could do
full justice to his breakfast, indeed; but he was saying to himself all
the while,--

"I won'er 'f I'll ebber git used to dis yer. It's jes' awful, dis goin'
to de 'cad'my."

CHAPTER XXVII.

A NEW KIND OF EXAMINATION.

Three large trunks and one small one were delivered at Mrs. Myers's
front door before that first breakfast was disposed of; and Miss Almira
remarked of the boys, a few minutes later,--

"How strong they are, especially Mr. Kinzer!"

"Don't make a mistake, Almira," said her mother in an undertone. "I'm
glad the trunks are up stairs, but we mustn't begin by saying 'mister'
to them. I've got all their first names. They mustn't get it into their
heads that they're any thing more'n just so many boys."

She hurried up stairs, however; and it did not take long to make her new
boarders "know their places," so far as their rooms were concerned. That
house was largely made up of its one "wing," on the first floor of which
was the dining-room and sitting-room, all in one. In the second story of
it were two bedrooms, opening into each other. The first and larger one
was assigned to Dab and Ford, and the inner one to Frank.

"Yours is a coop," said Ford to his friend from India; "but ours is big
enough. You can come in here to study, and we'll fix it up prime. The
stove's a queer one. Guess they burn wood up here mostly."

Of course, so long as there was a good "wood-lot" on the outlying farm
that belonged to Mr. Hart's speculation.

The stove was a little box of an affair, with two "griddles" on top, and
was quite capable of warming that floor.

"She's putting Dick away in back somewhere," said Frank. "We must look
and see what she's done for him."

The main building of that house was only big enough for a "hall," a
good-sized parlor opening into it on the right, a bedroom and large
closet back of that, and two rooms overhead; but the kitchen and
milk-room back, which must have been stuck on at a later day, had only
one wide, low garret of a room in the space under the roof. It was
lighted by a dormer window, and it did not contain any stove. The floor
was bare, except in the spot covered by an old rug before the little
narrow bed; but there was a table and a chair, by standing on either of
which Dick would be able to put his hand upon the unceiled rafters and
boards of the roof. On the whole, it was a room well calculated to be as
hot as possible