Chapter 12

After all, Ernest entered Harvard creditably. To work off two or three conditions would be a very small matter, —so he thought optimistically at the beginning of the year. On the whole, college had an unexpected charm for him, and he showed a temper in November quite different from that of the spring. Perhaps the summer’s tour in Europe, which he had made with Ralph and Ralph’s tutor, had changed his point of view. Miss Theodora could not feel grateful enough to Stuart Digby for sending Ernest to Europe. Though she had herself set aside a little sum for this purpose, she was only too glad to accept her cousin’s offer.

When the boys came home, their friends noted a change in Ernest. Mrs. Fetchum thought that it was largely in the matter of clothes.

“You couldn’t expect but what such stylish clothes would make a difference, at least in appearance; not but what Ernest himself is just the same as he used to be.”

Justice drove Mrs. Fetchum to this admission; for when Ernest, walking up the hill a few days after his home coming, caught sight of her as she stood within her half-open door, not only had he stopped to speak to her, but he had run up the steps to shake hands; this, too—for it was Sunday—in sight of several neighbors who were passing, and under the very eyes of certain inquisitive faces looking from windows near by, —a most gratifying remembrance to Mrs. Fetchum.

“Ernest looks some different,” said Mrs. Fetchum, describing the interview to Mr. Fetchum, “but his heart’s in the right place. He said he ain’t seen a place he liked better than Boston in all the course of his travels.”

Miss Chatterwits, who never agreed with any opinion of her neighbors, declared that Ernest was changed.

“But it isn’t his clothes. If I do make dresses, I don’t think that clothes is everything. It’s his manners. You can see it, Miss Theodora, —just a little more polish. It’s perfectly natural, you know, since he’s come in contact, so to speak, with foreign courts. Didn’t he say that he saw the royal family riding in a procession in London, and didn’t he and Ralph go to dinner at the American minister’s at The Hague? Those things of course count.”