Page:The Boys of Bellwood School.djvu/74

62. "You don't mean to say that you're traveling to school, too?"

"Yes," replied Frank. "But who else do you mean?"

"Why, my son, Robert, over there—Robert Upton. Now, isn't it funny—he's going right to the very school you are?"

"To Bellwood?"

"That's the name—Bellwood is the place," assented Mr. Upton. "Wish you'd tell me what you know about it."

"I don't know anything about it, except what I've read and what I've heard from friends who went there," said Frank. But it seemed he had enough information to quite interest the farmer. Then the latter told him about his stepson.

"Robert's been no good at home," he said. "You can see what a sulky, unsociable fellow he is. No interest in nothing—thinks everybody hates him, and won't make up to anybody. He says he'll run away if I put him in school. If he does, I certainly will put him in the reformatory until he's of age."

Frank stole a rather pitying glance at the lad. The latter was hunched down in his seat, his hands rammed into his pockets, looking bored and miserable. Frank wondered what kind of a queer makeup his nature could be, to mope and scowl that