Page:Dave Porter at Oak Hall.djvu/208

188 "Unless a fellow has good family connections he usually doesn't amount to anything."

"Hasn't he good connections? Somebody told me he was a nephew or something like that, of a rich manufacturer named Wadsworth."

"A nephew!" cried Nat PoolsPoole [sic]. "He is no relation whatever to Oliver Wadsworth. Wadsworth merely took a fancy to him—I can't see why—and sent him to school here."

"Then, where did Porter come from?" asked Gus Plum, interested.

"Came from the Crumville poorhouse," answered Nat Poole. "He's a foundling—a mere nobody. That's the reason I don't want anything to do with him."

"Well, I never!" ejaculated the bully of the school. He mused for a moment and then gave a low whistle. "Wish I had known of this before," he went on. "Did you tell anybody else?"

"No—I haven't been asked. I thought you'd like to know it."

"You're right there. I like to pick the people I associate with, the same as you do. I don't want to know any poorhouse nobodies."

"It's a wonder Dr. Clay let him come here," ventured Macklin. "All the other boys, so far as I know, come from the best of families. Some of them wouldn't like it a bit to learn they were schooling with a poorhouse nobody."