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Updated: May 10, 2025
"Well, I wasn't scared, was I?" challenged Dutcher. Hen's eye roved until it rested on Dick's face. "I don't know whether you were, or not," Prescott replied soberly. "I had too much of my own alarm on hand to notice just how you were acting." "Well, I wasn't scared," Hen asserted vehemently. "And I'd like to see any one dare to say that I was."
Rest easy on that score." "I hope we won't see him," muttered Dave, as the boys stood outside the cabin watching the departing officers. "If we do we'll get out of it better than Mr. Fits does, anyway," half boasted Dick. "Say, you fellows " began Hen, stepping out and joining Dick & Co. All six turned to gaze at Dutcher. Then they looked at each other, the same thought in six minds.
"You know yourself better than any one else can," was Prescott's taunting answer. "Come on, fellows!" urged Fred. "Rush 'em!" There was a prompt rush. Dick and his friends did not flinch, but met the attack squarely. Hen Dutcher was the only boy present who did not display much eagerness to get at too close quarters in the fray.
"But," Toby continued, "I never thought there was that much stuff in Hen Dutcher." "What stuff? What kind of stuff!" demanded Tom. "Why, Hen is back in Gridley," Toby answered, "and, from the tales he has been telling, he was the whole life and safety of your crowd out in the forest." "Come to think of it," Tom replied soberly, "I believe he was." "Then Hen's yarns are true?" asked Toby.
Hen got up, after dabbing his upper lip with his handkerchief and finding that the scratch amounted to nothing. No further effort was made to molest Hen. "Now, when you talk, say something pleasant. Don't talk so disagreeably all the time," advised Prescott in a low tone. "At least, not unless you're really hunting trouble." "This is the meanest crowd I ever saw," declared Hen Dutcher stiffly.
He says they would knock down his fences climbing over them, and like as not set fire to his barn." "Old Dutcher was always a crank," said Mr. Rogers, "and doubtless will be to the end. By the way, I heard a rumour to the effect that you are soon going to take a course at the business college in Trenton. I hope it's true." Ned's frank face clouded over. "I'm afraid not, sir.
After that, with twenty minute shifts, the work went along more rapidly, though once in a while one of the shovelers had to go back over the path, digging out where more snow had blown in. Hen Dutcher was not asked to share in this strenuous work. He had enough to do in the cabin, and this outdoor performance was no work, anyway, for a whiner.
Then these four Grammar School boys received a big surprise. Hen Dutcher was there, but so were Fred Ripley, Bert Dodge and a half dozen other young fellows, all of them older and larger than the members of Dick & Co. To make the intrusion still more impudent, Ripley's crowd were all at table, eating the best that the cabin afforded.
"You lemme alone, I tell you!" screamed Dutcher, blubbering. "I've got to go home and get myself attended to." "Come on, booby!" jeered Alvord, forcing a hand under one of Hen's shoulders and trying to lift him. "Lemme alone. Can't you see I'm badly hurt?" "Let Hen alone," broke in Dick quietly. "He's got to come ashore and have his face washed in the snow," insisted Alvord.
It did not displease him to know that the Carleton boys hated him. In fact, it seemed as if he rather liked it. "Besides," went on Ned, "you couldn't afford the time. You couldn't be on the pond for eight hours a day and until ten o'clock at night. I can, as I've nothing else to do just now. If I had, I wouldn't have to be trying to make money by a skating-rink." Old Dutcher scowled.
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