Axel Ebersen Author:Paschal Grousset Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. THE LITTLE BOAT. Next morning I told the school that Axel Ebersen was coming, and, as was my custom, I asked them all to give the new recruit a f... more »riendly welcome. " I trust to you," I said, as I finished my allocution, " to sustain the school's good name, and to know how to make our system agreeable to a stranger; but it is to Olle in particular that I entrust Ebersen." " All right, sir," Olle contented himself with answering. And I knew that that could be depended on more than all the protestations of the others. " He will, I expect, upset you a little at the beginning," said I, after a few moments' familiar chat, "particularly as you are all so busy just now. But we must help each other, you know." " Never fear, Mr. Bistrom," said Olle, " it will all come right; and besides, it will be a pleasure to look after a boy who seems so likeable and so quick." " Oh, I dare say," said a boy of the name of Gulloe, who had joined us a few months before. " You are full of this little prig because he said your boat was a wonder 1 " " What do you mean," said little Olaf Werner, " by calling him a prig ? And if Ebersen did like the boat he showed more taste than some Ostrogoths I know." Young Gulloe was a native of the isle of Gotland, a part of Ostrogothia, and to call him an Ostrogoth was perhaps excusable. His parents had lived for some months in Stockholm before they came to settle at Sonneborg; Gulloe never lost an opportunity of calling himself a native of the capital, saying nothing of his real birthplace, of which he was stupidly ashamed, but which everyone knew, and which his provincial accent would alone have betrayed. And consequently Olaf's thrust made him angry. " Yes," said he bitterly; " the new favourite's fine gold chain has won the da...« less