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At grammar school, back at home, Rodney’s friends and companions had viewed his studiousness with surprise, and for awhile with disapproval. Finding eventually, however, that aside from his strange love for lessons he was very much the same as they were, they forgave him his peculiarity. But at Maple Hill scholarship was not regarded askance. In fact, Maple Hill rather went in for learning, and Rodney found himself in congenial surroundings. Maple Hill had its own local idiom, and in its language to study was to nose, and one who was of professed studiousness was a noser. Doubtless the word was suggested by the expression “with his nose in his book.” At all events, Rodney became a noser, and settled down quite happily and contentedly.

Of course, just at first there were some lonesome hours. In fact there was one whole day of homesickness. That was Thursday. On Thursday Orleans, Nebraska, seemed a terribly long way off and the trees sort of smothered him, and the cool, crisp breeze that blew along Maple Ridge brought an ache with it. But somehow on Friday morning it was all different. He awoke to find Kitty lying on his back in the middle of the floor, chastely attired in a suit of white and pink pajamas, going through his first exercises. He had different ones for almost every period of the day. Just now he was stretched at length, inflating and deflating his lungs and making strange, hoarse noises in his throat. Rodney looked on for a moment in amusement, and then suddenly discovering that the sunlight streaming across the foot of his bed was very bright, that the morning air held an invitation, and that he was most terribly hungry, he made a bound that just cleared Kitty’s prostrate form and was ready for anything that fate had in store. And fate, as it happened, had quite a number of things up its sleeve.