"Why, Mark, you're pretty nigh as tall as a Floridy pine." He insisted on taking the whole party to dine with him at the hotel, and at dinner told Mark that that little business of theirs had got to wait a while, and meantime he wanted him to run over to Norton, and stay at Dr.Wing's until he came for him.
This was just what Mark had been wishing, above all things, that he could do, and he almost hugged "Uncle Christmas" for his thoughtful kindness.
After dinner the happy party bade the old gentleman good-bye, and took the train for Skowhegan, where they found the same old rattlety-bang stage waiting to carry them to Norton.
As with a flourish of the driver's horn and a cracking of his whip they rolled into the well-known Norton street, a crowd of boys and girls, who seemed to have been watching for them, gave three rousing cheers for Mark Elmer, and three more for Ruth Elmer, and then three times three for both of them.
The stage stopped, and in another instant Ruth was hugging and kissing, and being hugged and kissed, by her "very dearest, darlingest friend" Edna May, and Mark was being slapped on the back and hauled this way and that, and was shaking hands with all the boys in Norton..