either they nor he dared disobey it.

In fact it was soon apparent they felt vastly sorry on Christopher's
account that the mandate had been pronounced. Everybody did. Ill news
travels as if on wings, and before the boy had been home a day the
entire community was offering him sympathy for a calamity which did not
seem to him any calamity at all.

True, he detested his blue glasses and would gladly have consigned them
to the ash barrel. Still no sky is without shadows; one must take the
cake as well as the frosting. Certainly he found it no cross to rise in
leisurely fashion while the other kids were hiking along to school and
sit down to a hot breakfast cooked especially for him; nor, when the
bells were just about ringing for recitations, could it be considered a
hardship to saunter off for a tramp in the sunshine, with Joffre, his
tireless collie, bounding on before him.

No, his lot was far from an unhappy one. For a week or two he was
entirely content. Of course there was no denying there were moments that
dragged. He couldn't read, and he had always derived keen delight from a
good pirate story. However, people read to him, and that was the next
best thing. Often his father or his mother would toss aside their books
or papers and read aloud to him an entire evening. But the books they
selected were never pirate stories. Instead they were almost always
things that aimed to improve him, and if there was anything Christopher
resented, it was being improved. Therefore while he appreciated the good
intentions of his parents in reading and explaining to him Emerson's
essays, he would as lief have exchanged all of them for a single chapter
of "Treasure Island." But, alas, his father was not of the "Treasure
Island" sort, and neither was his mother. Indeed it is doubtful whether
they would have recognized Silver had they met him in broad daylight, on
the main street. As for himself he missed Silver sadly--Silver,
Deerslayer, and all the rest of his cronies, and before long time began
to hang heavily on his hands.

Elversham was, it is true, a beautiful suburb in which to live. Still,
there wasn't much doing in it. If your day was not filled with school,
baseball, football, or building a radio, how was a chap to fill up his
time? He could, of course, go down to the athletic field and watch the
games, but as he was accustomed to being in the thick of them, he
derived no great pleasure from sitting about on the edges and