, with strange perversity, he charged to the Normal. Brutus was
getting well, but there would always be a scar on his shoulder, where
the sharp-pointed shrub had entered the flesh. The carriage had been
repaired, the stained cushions had been re-covered, and the Colonel had
sworn at the amount of the bill, and said it never would have happened
if the trustees had hired Ruby Ann in the first place, as they should
have done. He knew she now had the school, and felt a kind of grim
satisfaction that it was so. She was rooted and grounded, while the
other one, as far as he could learn, was a little pink and white doll,
with no fundamentals whatever. He had forgotten that Howard was to sound
her, and did not dream how often that young man and his friend were at
Mrs. Biggs's, not sounding Eloise as to her knowledge, but growing more
and more intoxicated with her beauty and sweetness and entire absence of
the self-consciousness and airs they were accustomed to find in most
young ladies.

But for the non-arrival of the letter she was so anxious to get Eloise
would have been comparatively happy, or at least content. Her ankle was
gaining rapidly, and she hoped soon to take her place in school, Tim
having offered to wheel her there every day and back, and assuring her
that, mean as he was, Tom Walker was not mean enough to annoy her in her
helpless condition. For some reason Eloise had not now much dread of Tom
Walker, and expressed a desire to see him.

"Tell him to call," she said to Tim, who delivered her message rather
awkwardly, as if expecting a rebuff.

"Oh, get out," was Tom's reply, "I ain't one of your callin' kind, with
cards and things, and she'll see enough of me bimeby."

The words sounded more ungracious than Tom intended. He said he was not
the calling kind, but the fact that he had been asked to do so pleased
him, and two or three times he walked past Mrs. Biggs's in hopes to see
the little lady in whom he was beginning to feel a good deal of
interest. He met Jack occasionally, and always received a bow of
recognition and a cheery "How are you, Tom?" until he began to believe
himself something more than a loafer and a bully whom every hand was
against. He was rather anxious for the little Normal to begin her
duties, and she was anxious, too, for funds were low and growing less
all the time.

"Wait till the Rummage is over. That is coming next week. You will want
to go to that and see the people you have not s