"It is your only chance, and so I advise
you to choose Latin. It is what I think a boy with your head should
take anyhow."
"All right, Sir," assented Keith, flattered by the last part of Dally's
remark and utterly ignorant of what his choice implied.
That evening he told his father that he had been asked whether he wanted
to enter the Latin or the English branch of the fourth grade, and that
he had chosen the former.
"Why," asked his father.
"Because Dally says I ought to," replied Keith.
"Well, he ought to know," said the father.
But when Keith appeared in the schoolyard during one of the pauses next
day, he was met from every side by the cry:
"There's the explorer! There's the explorer!"
The younger boys jeered openly at him. The older ones pretended to ask
him serious questions about his plans. For days he was the laughing
stock of the whole school, and even on his way to and from school he was
pursued by jibes and taunts. Through it all Keith stuck quietly to his
guns, without a sign of retraction or evasion. And in the end his
seriousness conquered. But from that day he was known to the entire
school as "the explorer," and he heard that term more often than his
own name.
XI
It was the afternoon of the last day before commencement.
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