At last Dab got wearily up, and took a chair by the window.
The night was dark, but the stars were shining; and every now and then the wind would make a shovel of itself, and toss up the hot ashes the fire had left, sending a dull red glare around on the house and barns for a moment, and flooding all the neighborhood with a stronger smell of burnt hay.
"If you're going to burn hay," soliloquized Dabney, "it won't do to take a barn for a stove.

Not that kind of a barn.

But what did Ham Morris mean by saying that I was to go to boarding-school?
That's what I'd like to know" The secret was out.
He had kept remarkably still, for him, all the evening, and had not asked a question; but, if his brains were ever to work over his books as they had over Ham's remark, his future chances for sound sleep were all gone.

It had come upon him so suddenly, the very thing he thought about that night in "The Swallow," and wished for and dreamed about during all those walks and talks and lessons of all sorts with Ford Foster and Frank Harley, ever since they came in from that memorable cruise.
It was a wonderful idea, and Dab had his doubts as to the way his mother would take to it when it should be brought seriously before her.

Little he guessed the truth.