Impulsively she threw her arms about him and hugged him until he ruefully admitted to himself that she had Jud “beat on the clutch.”
“And say, David, I’m a-goin’ to wear this dress. I know folks as lets their silks wear out a-hangin’ up in closets. Don’t get half as many cracks when it hangs on yourself. I b’lieve as them Episcopals do in lettin’ yer light shine,69and I never wuz one of them as b’lieved in savin’ yer best to be laid out in. Oh, Lord, David, I kin jest hear myself a-rustlin’ round in it!”
“Maybe you’ll get a husband now,” suggested David gravely.
“Mebby. I’d orter ketch somethin’ with this. I never see sech silk. It’s much handsomer than the one Homer Bisbee’s bride hed when she come here from the city. It’s orful the way she wastes. Would you b’lieve it, David, the fust batch of pies she made, she never pricked, and they all puffed up and bust. David, look here! What’s in this envylope? Forever and way back, ef it hain’t a five-doller bill and a letter. I hain’t got my glasses handy. Read it.”
“Dear Miss Rhody,” read the boy in his musical voice, “silk is none too good for you, and I want you to wear this and wear it out. If you don’t, I’ll never send you another. I thought you might want some more trimmings, so I send you a five for same. Sincerely yours, Joe.”70
“I don’t need no trimmin’s, excep’ fifty cents for roochin’s.”
“I’ll tell you what to do, Miss Rhody. When you get your dress made we’ll go into town and you can get your picture taken in the dress and give it to Joe when he comes back.”
“That’s jest what I’ll do. I never hed my likeness took. David, you’ve got an orful quick mind. Is Joe coming home? I thought he callated to go West.”
“Not until fall. He’s going to spend the summer in his shanty boat on the river.”
“I’ll hurry up and get it made up afore he comes. Tell me what he sent all your folks.”
“Joe’s a generous boy, like his ma’s folks,” she continued, when he had enumerated their gifts. “I am glad fer him that his pa and his stepmother was so scrimpin’. David, would you b’lieve it, in that great big house of the Forbeses thar wa’n’t never a tidy on a chair, and not a picter on the wall! It was mighty lucky for Joe that his stepmother died fust, so he got all the money.”
David hastened home and sought his retreat71in the orchard with one of his books. M’ri, curious to know what his selection had been, scanned the titles of the remaining eleven volumes.
“Well, who would have thought of a boy’s preferring fairy tales!”
David read until dinner time, but spent the afternoon with Uncle Larimy and Jud in the woods, where they received good instruction in rifle practice. After supper he settled comfortably down with a book, from which he was recalled by a plaintive little wail.
“I haven’t had a bit of fun to-day, Davey, and it’s Saturday, and you haven’t played with me at all!”
The book closed instantly.
“Come on out doors, Janey,” he invited.
The sound of childish laughter fell pleasantly on M’ri’s ears. She recalled what Joe Forbes had said about her own children, and an unbidden tear lingered on her lashes. This little space between twilight and lamplight was M’ri’s favorite hour. In every season but winter it was spent on the west porch, where she could72watch the moon and the stars come out. Maybe, too, it was because from here she had been wont to sit in days gone by and watch for Martin’s coming. The time and place were conducive to backward flights of memory, and M’ri’s pictures of the past were most beguiling, except that last one when Martin Thorne, stern-faced, unrelenting, and vowing that he would never see her again, had left her alone––to do her duty.
When the children came in she joined them. Janey, flushed and breathless from play, was curled up on the couch beside David. He put his arm caressingly about her and began to relate one of Andersen’s fairy tales. M’ri gazed at them tenderly, and was weaving a future little romance for her two young charges when Janey said petulantly: “I don’t like fairy stories, Davey. Tell a real one.”
M’ri noted the disappointment in the boy’s eyes as he began the narrating of a more realistic story.
“David, where did you read that story?” she asked when he had finished.73
“I made it up,” he confessed.
“Why, David, I didn’t know you had such a talent. You must be an author when you are a man.”
Late that night she saw a light shining from beneath the young narrator’s door.
“I ought to send him to bed,” she meditated, “but, poor lad, he has had so few pleasures and, after all, childhood is the only time for thorough enjoyment, so why should I put a feather in its path?”
David read until after midnight, and went to bed with a book under his pillow that he might begin his pastime again at dawn.
After breakfast the next morning M’ri commanded the whole family to sit down and write their thanks to Joe. David’s willing pen flew in pace with his thoughts as he told of Miss Rhody’s delight and his own revel in book land. Janey made most wretched work of her composition. She sighed and struggled with thoughts and pencil, which she gnawed at both ends. Finally she confessed that she couldn’t think of anything more to say. M’ri came to74inspect her literary effort, which was written in huge characters.
“Dear Joe––”
“Oh,” commented M’ri doubtfully, “I don’t know as you should address him so familiarly.”
“I called him ‘Joe’ when we rode to school. He told me to,” defended Janey.
“He’s just like a boy,” suggested David.
So M’ri, silenced, read on: “I thank you for your beyewtifull present which I cannot have.”
“Oh, Janey,” expostulated M’ri, laughing; “that doesn’t sound very gracious.”
“Well, you said I couldn’t have them till I was grown up.”
“I was wrong,” admitted M’ri. “I didn’t realize it then. We have to see a thing written sometimes to know how it sounds.”
“May I wear them?” asked Janey exultingly. “May I put them on now?”
“Yes,” consented M’ri.
Janey flew upstairs and came back wearing the adored turquoises, which made her eyes most beautifully blue.
“Now I can write,” she affirmed, taking up75her pencil with the impetus of an incentive. Under the inspiration of the beads around her neck, she wrote:
“Dear Joe:
“I am wareing the beyewtifull beeds you sent me around my neck. Aunt M’ri says they are terkwoyses. I never had such nice beeds and I thank you. I wish I cood ride with you agen. Good bye. From your frend,
“Janey.”
76
CHAPTER VI
The next day being town day, David “hooked up” Old Hundred and drove to the house. After the butter crock, egg pails, and kerosene and gasoline cans had been piled in, Barnabas squeezed into the space beside David. M’ri came out with a memorandum of supplies for them to get in town. To David she handed a big bunch of spicy, pink June roses.
“What shall I do with them?” he asked wonderingly.
“Give them to some one who looks as if he needed flowers,” she replied.
“I will,” declared the boy interestedly. “I will watch them all and see how they look at the roses.”
At last M’ri had a kindred spirit in her household. Jud would have sneered, and Janey would not have understood. To Barnabas all flowers looked alike.77
It had come to be a custom for Barnabas to take David to town with him at least once a week. The trip was necessarily a slow one, for from almost every farmhouse he received a petition to “do a little errand in town.” As the good nature and accommodating tendency of Barnabas were well known, they were accordingly imposed upon. He received commissions of every character, from the purchase of a corn sheller to the matching of a blue ribbon. He also stopped to pick up a child or two en route to school or to give a lift to a weary pedestrian whom he overtook.
While Barnabas made his usual rounds of the groceries, meatmarket, drug store, mill, feed store, general store, and a hotel where he was well known, David was free to go where he liked. Usually he accompanied Barnabas, but to-day he walked slowly up the principal business street, watching for “one who needed flowers.” Many glances were bestowed upon the roses, some admiring, some careless, and then––his heart almost stopped beating at the significance––Judge Thorne came by. He, too,78glanced at the roses. His gaze lingered, and a look came into his eyes that stimulated David’s passion for romance.
“He’s remembering,” he thought joyfully.
He didn’t hesitate even an instant. He stopped in front of the Judge and extended the flowers.
“Would you like these roses, Judge Thorne?” he asked courteously.
Then for the first time the Judge’s attention was diverted from the flowers.
“Your face is familiar, my lad, but––”
“My name is David Dunne.”
“Yes, to be sure, but it must be four years or more since I last saw you. How’s your mother getting along?”
The boy’s face paled.
“She died three weeks ago,” he answered.
“Oh, my lad,” he exclaimed in shocked tones, “I didn’t know! I only returned last night from a long journey. But with whom are you living?”
“With Aunt M’ri and Uncle Barnabas.”
“Oh!”79
The impressive silence following this exclamation was broken by the Judge.
“Why do you offer me these flowers, David?”
“Aunt M’ri picked them and told me to give them to some one who looked as if they needed flowers.”
The Judge eyed him with the keen scrutiny of the trained lawyer, but the boy’s face was non-committal.
“Come up into my office with me, David,” commanded the Judge, turning quickly into a near-by stairway. David followed up the stairs and into a suite of well-appointed offices.
A clerk looked up in surprise at the sight of the dignified judge carrying a bouquet of old-fashioned roses and accompanied by a country lad.
“Good morning, Mathews. I am engaged, if any one comes.”
He preceded David into a room on whose outer door was the deterrent word, “Private.”
While the Judge got a pitcher of water to hold the flowers David crossed the room. On a table near the window was a rack of books80which he eagerly inspected. To his delight he saw a volume of Andersen’s Fairy Tales. Instantly the book was opened, and he was devouring a story.
“David,” spoke the Judge from the other end of the room, “didn’t these roses grow on a bush by the west porch?”
There was no answer.
The Judge, remarking the boy’s absorption, came to see what he was reading.
“Andersen’s Fairy Tales! My favorite book. I didn’t know that boys liked fairy stories.”
David looked up quickly.
“I didn’t know that lawyers did, either.”
“Well, I do, David. They are my most delightful diversion.”
“Girls don’t like fairy stories,” mused David. “Anyway, Janey doesn’t. I have to tell true stories to please her.”
“Oh, you are a yarner, are you?”
“Yes,” admitted David modestly. “Aunt M’ri thinks I will be a writer when I grow up, but I think I should like to be a lawyer.”
“David,” asked the Judge abruptly, “did81Miss Brumble tell you to give me those roses?”
With a wild flashing of eyes the Dunne temper awoke, and the boy’s under jaw shot forward.
“No!” he answered fiercely. “She didn’t know that I know––”
He paused in mid-channel of such deep waters.
“That you know what?” demanded the Judge in his cross-examining tone.
David was doubtful of the consequences of his temerity, but he stood his ground.
“I can’t tell you what, because I promised not to. Some one was just thinking out loud, and I overheard.”
There was silence for a moment.
“David, I remember your father telling me, years ago, that he had a little son with a big imagination which his mother fed by telling stories every night at bedtime.”
“Will you tell me,” asked David earnestly, “about my father? What was it he did? Uncle Barnabas told me something about his trouble last Saturday.”82
“How did he come to mention your father to you?”
David reddened.
“Jud twitted me about my mother taking in washing and about my father being a convict, and I knocked him down. I told him I would kill him. Uncle Barnabas pulled me off.”
“And then?”
“Then he let us fight it out.”
“And you licked?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the boy, with proud modesty.
“You naturally would, with that under jaw, but it’s the animal in us that makes us want to kill, and the man in us should rise above the animal. I think I am the person to tell you about your father. He had every reason to make good, but he was unfortunate in his choice of associates and he acquired some of their habits. He had a violent temper, and one night when he was––”
“Drunk,” supplied David gravely.
“He became angry with one of his friends and tried to kill him. Your father was given83a comparatively short sentence, which he had almost served when he died. You must guard against your temper and cultivate patience and endurance––qualities your mother possessed.”
It suddenly and overwhelmingly flashed across David what need his mother must have had for such traits, and he turned away to force back his tears. The Judge saw the heaving of the slender, square, young shoulders, and the gray eyes that were wont to look so coldly upon the world and its people grew soft and surprisingly moist.
“It’s past now, David, and can’t be helped, but you are going to aim to be the kind of man your mother would want you to be. You must learn to put up with Jud’s tyranny because his father and his aunt are your benefactors. I have been away the greater part of the time since your father’s death, or I should have kept track of you and your mother. Every time you come to town I want you to come up here and report to me. Will you?”
“Thank you, sir. And I will bring you some more flowers.”84
CHAPTER VII
“Whar wuz you, Dave, all the time we wuz in town?” asked Barnabas, as they drove homeward.
“In Judge Thorne’s office.”
“Judge Thorne’s office! What fer?”
“He asked me there, Uncle Barnabas. He was my father’s lawyer once, you know.”
“So he wuz. I hed fergot.”
“He warned me against my temper, as you did, and he told me––all about my father.”
“I am glad he did, Dave. He wuz the one to tell you.”
“He says that every time I come to Lafferton I must come up and report to him.”
“Wal, Dave, it does beat all how folks take to you. Thar wuz Joe wanted you, and now Mart Thorne’s interested. Mebby they could do better by you than we could. Joe’s rich, and the Jedge is well fixed and almighty smart.”
“No,” replied David stoutly. “I’d rather85stay with you, Uncle Barnabas. There’s something you’ve got much more of than they have.”
“What’s that, Dave?” asked Barnabas curiously.
“Horse sense.”
Barnabas looked pleased.
“Wal, Dave, I callate to do my best fer you, and thar’s one thing I wantyouto git some horse sense about right off.”
“All right, Uncle Barnabas. What is it?”
“Feedin’ on them fairy stories all day. They hain’t hullsome diet fer a boy.”
“The Judge reads them,” protested David. “He has that same book of fairy stories that Joe gave me.”
“When you’ve done all the Jedge has, and git to whar you kin afford to be idle, you kin read any stuff you want ter.”
“Can’t I read them at all?” asked David in alarm.
“Of course you kin. I meant, I didn’t want you stickin’ to ’em like a pup to a root. You’re goin’ down to the fields to begin work with me86this arternoon, and you won’t feel much like readin’ to-night. I wuz lookin’ over them books of your’n last night. Thar’s one you’d best start in on right away, and give the fairies a rest.”
“Which one?”
“Life of Lincoln. That’ll show you what work will do.”
“I’ll read it aloud to you, Uncle Barnabas.”
When they reached the bridge that spanned the river Old Hundred dropped the little hurrying gait which he assumed in town, and settled down to his normal, comfortable, country jog.
“Uncle Barnabas,” said David thoughtfully, “what is your religion?”
Barnabas meditated.
“Wal, Dave, I don’t know as I hev what you might call religion exackly. I b’lieve in payin’ a hundred cents on the dollar, and a-helpin’ the man that’s down, and––wal, I s’pose I come as nigh bein’ a Unitarian as anything.”
The distribution of the purchases now began. Sometimes the good housewife, herself, came out to receive the parcels and to hear the latest87news from town. Oftener, the children of the household were the messengers, for Barnabas’ pockets were always well filled with candy on town days. At one place Barnabas stopped at a barn by the roadside and surreptitiously deposited a suspicious looking package. When he was in front of the next farmhouse a man came out with anxious mien.
“All right, Fred!” hailed Barnabas with a knowing wink. “I was afeerd you’d not be on the watchout. I left it in the manger.”
They did not reach the farm until the dinner hour, and the conversation was maintained by M’ri and Barnabas on marketing matters. David spent the afternoon in being initiated in field work. At supper, M’ri asked him suddenly:
“To whom did you give the flowers, David?”
“I’ve made a story to it, Aunt M’ri, and I’m going to tell it to Janey. Then you can hear.”
M’ri smiled, and questioned him no further.
When the day was done and the “still hour” had come, Janey and David, hand in hand,88came around the house and sat down at her feet. It was seldom that any one intruded at this hour, but she knew that David had come to tell his story.
“Begin, Davey,” urged Janey impatiently.
“One day, when a boy was going to town, his aunt gave him a big bouquet of pink roses. She told him to give them to some one who looked as if they needed flowers. So when the boy got to town he walked up Main Street and looked at every one he met. He hoped to see a little sick child or a tired woman who had no flowers of her own; but every one seemed to be in a hurry, and very few stopped to look at flowers or anything else. Those that did look turned away as if they did not see them, and some seemed to be thinking, ‘What beautiful flowers!’ and then forgot them.
“At last he met a tall, stern man dressed in fine clothes. He looked very proud, but as if he were tired of everything. When he saw the flowers he didn’t turn away, but kept his eyes on them as if they made him sad and lonesome in thinking of good times that were over. So89the boy asked him if he would not like the flowers. The man looked surprised and asked the boy what his name was. When he heard it, he remembered that he had been attorney for the boy’s father. He took him up into an office marked private, and he gave the boy some good advice, and talked to him about his mother, which made the boy feel bad. But the man comforted him and told him that every time he came to town he was to report to him.”
M’ri had sat motionless during the recital of this story. At its close she did not speak.
“That wasn’t much of a story. Let’s go play,” suggested Janey, relieving the tension.
They were off like a flash. David heard his name faintly called. M’ri’s voice sounded far off, and as if there were tears in it, but he lacked the courage to return.90
CHAPTER VIII
Two important events calendared the next week. The school year ended and Pennyroyal, the “hired help,” who had been paying her annual visit to her sister, came back to the farm. There are two kinds of housekeepers, the “make-cleans” and the “keep-cleans.” Pennyroyal was a graduate of both classes. Her ruling passions in life were scrubbing and “redding” up. On the day of her return, after making onslaught on house and porches, she attacked the pump, and planned a sand-scouring siege for the morrow on the barn. In appearance she was a true exponent of soap and water, and always had the look of being freshly laundered.
At first Pennyroyal looked with ill favor on the addition that had been made to the household in her absence, but when David submitted to the shampooing of his tousled mass of hair,91and offered no protest when she scrubbed his neck, she became reconciled to his presence.
On a “town day” David, carrying a huge bunch of pinks, paid his second visit to the Judge.
“Did she tell you,” asked the tall man, gazing very hard at the landscape without the open window, “to give these flowers to some one who needed them?”
There was a perilous little pause. Then there flashed from the boy to the man a gaze of comprehension.
“She picked them for you,” was the response, simply spoken.
The Judge carefully selected a blossom for his buttonhole, and then proceeded to draw David out. Under the skillful, schooled questioning, David grew communicative.
“She’s always on the west porch after supper.” He added naïvely: “That’s the time when Uncle Barnabas smokes on the east porch, Jud goes off with the boys, and I play with Janey in the lane.”
“Thank you, David,” acknowledged the92Judge gratefully. “You are quite a bureau of information, and,” in a consciously casual tone, “will you take a note to your aunt? I think I will ride out to the farm to-night.”
David’s young heart fluttered, and he went back to the farm invested with a proud feeling of having assisted the fates. The air was filled with mystery and an undercurrent of excitement that day. After David had delivered the auspicious note, a private conference behind closed doors had been held between M’ri and Barnabas in the “company parlor.” David’s shrewd young eyes noted the weakening of the lines of finality about M’ri’s mouth when she emerged from the interview. Throughout the long afternoon she performed the usual tasks in nervous haste, the color coming and going in her delicately contoured face.
When she appeared at the supper table she was adorned in white, brightened by touches of blue at belt and collar. David’s young eyes surveyed her appraisingly and approvingly, and later he effected a thorough effacing of the family. He obtained from Barnabas permission for93Jud to go to town with the Gardner boys. His next diplomatic move was to persuade Pennyroyal to go with himself and Janey to Uncle Larimy’s hermit home. When she wavered, he commented on the eclipse of Uncle Larimy’s windows the last time he saw them. That turned the tide of Pennyroyal’s resistance. Equipped with soft linen, a cake of strong soap, and a bottle of ammonia, she strode down the lane, accompanied by the children.
The walk proved a trying ordeal for Pennyroyal. She started out at her accustomed brisk gait, but David loitered and sauntered, Janey of course setting her pace by his. Pennyroyal, feeling it incumbent upon herself to keep watch of her young companions, retraced her steps so often that she covered the distance several times.
At Uncle Larimy’s she found such a fertile field for her line of work that David was quite ready to return when she pronounced her labors finished. She was really tired, and quite willing to walk home slowly in the moonlight.
It was very quiet. Here and there a bird,94startled from its hiding place, sought refuge in the higher branches. A pensive quail piped an answer to the trilling call from the meadows. A tree toad uttered his lonely, guttural exclamation. The air, freshening with a coming covey of clouds, swayed the tops of the trees with mournful sound.
David, full of dreams, let his fancy have full play, and he made a little story of his own about the meeting of the lovers. He pictured the Judge riding down the dust-white road as the sunset shadows grew long. He knew the exact spot––the last bit of woodland––from where Martin, across level-lying fields, could obtain his first glimpse of the old farmhouse and porch. His moving-picture conceit next placed M’ri, dressed in white, with touches of blue, on the west porch. He had decided that in the Long Ago Days she had been wont to wear blue, which he imagined to be the Judge’s favorite color. Then he caused the unimpressionable Judge to tie his horse to the hitching post at the side of the road and walk between the hedges of sweet peas that bordered95the path. Their pink and white sweetness was the trumpet call sounding over the grave of the love of his youth. (David had read such a passage in a book at Miss Rhody’s and thought it very fine and applicable.) His active fancy took Martin Thorne around the house to the west porch. The white figure arose, and in the purple-misted twilight he saw the touches of blue, and his heart lighted.
“Marie!”
The old name, the name he had given her in his love-making days, came to his lips. (David couldn’t make M’ri fit in with the settings of his story, so he re-christened her.) She came forward with outstretched hand and a gentle manner, but at the look in his eyes as he uttered the old name, with the caressing accent on the first syllable, she understood. A deep sunrise color flooded her face and neck.
“Martin!” she whispered as she came to him.
David threw back his head and shut his eyes in ecstatic bliss. He was rudely roused from his romantic weaving by the sound of Barnabas’ chuckle as they came to the east porch.96
“You must a washed every one of Larimy’s winders!”
“Yes,” replied Janey, “and she mopped his floors, washed and clean-papered the shelves, and wanted to scrub the old gray horse.”
“Pennyroyal,” exclaimed Barnabas gravely, “I wonder you ain’t waterlogged!”
“Pennyroyal’d rather be clean than be President,” averred David.
“Where’s M’ri?” demanded Pennyroyal, ignoring these thrusts.
“On the west porch, entertaining company,” remarked Barnabas.
“Who?”
Pennyroyal never used a superfluous word. Joe Forbes said she talked like telegrams.
Barnabas removed his pipe from his mouth, and paused to give his words greater dramatic force.
“Mart Thorne!”
The effect was satisfactory.
Pennyroyal stood as if petrified for a moment. Than she expressed her feelings.
“Hallelujah!”97
Her tone made the exclamation as impressive as a benediction.
M’ri visited the bedside of each of her charges that night. Jud and Janey were in the land of dreams, but David was awake, expecting her coming. There was a new tenderness in her good-night kiss.
“Aunt M’ri,” asked the boy, looking up with his deep, searching eyes and a suspicion of a smile about his lips, “did you and Judge Thorne talk over my education? He said that he was going to speak to you about it.”
Her eyes sparkled.
“David, the Judge is coming to dinner Sunday. We will talk it over with you then.”
“Aunt M’ri,” a little note of wistfulness chasing the bantering look from his eyes, “you aren’t going to leave us now?”
“Not for a year, David,” she said, a soft flush coming to her face.
“He’s waited seven,” thought David, “so one more won’t make so much difference. Anyway, we need a year to get used to it.”
After all, David was only a boy. His flights98of romantic fancy vanished in remembrance of the blissful certainty that there would be ice cream for dinner on Sunday next and on many Sundays thereafter.99
CHAPTER IX
The little trickle of uneven days was broken one morning by a message which was brought by the “hired man from Randall’s.”
“We’ve got visitors from the city tew our house,” he announced. “They want you to send Janey over tew play with their little gal.”
Befitting the honor of the occasion, Janey was attired in her blue-sprigged muslin and allowed to wear the turquoises. David drove her to Maplewood, the pretentious home of the Randalls, intending to call for her later. When they came to the entrance of the grounds at the end of a long avenue of maples a very tiny girl, immaculate in white, with hair of gold and eyes darkly blue, came out from among the trees. She regarded David with deep, grave eyes as he stepped from the wagon to open the gate.
“You’ve come to play with me,” she stated in a tone of assurance.
“I’ve brought Janey to play with you,” he100rejoined, indicating his little companion. “If you’ll get in the wagon, I’ll drive you up to the house.”
She held up her slender little arms to him, and David felt as if he were lifting a doll.
“My name in Carey Winthrop. What is yours?” she demanded of Janey as they all rode up the shaded, graveled road.
“Janey Brumble,” replied the visitor, gaining ease from the ingenuousness of the little girl and from the knowledge that she was older than her hostess.
“And he’s your brother?” indicating David.
“He’s my adopted brother,” said Janey; “he’s David Dunne.”
“I wish I had a ’dopted brother,” sighed the little girl, eying David wistfully.
David drove up to the side entrance of the large, white-columned, porticoed house, on the spacious veranda of which sat a fair-haired young woman with luminous eyes and smiling mouth. The smile deepened as she saw the curiously disfigured horse ambling up to the stone step.101
“Whoa, Old Hundred!” commanded David, whereupon the smile became a rippling laugh. David got out, lifted the little girl to the ground very carefully, and gave a helping hand to the nimble, independent Janey.
“Mother,” cried Carey delightedly, “this is Janey and her ’dopted brother David.”
David touched his cap gravely in acknowledgment of the introduction. He had never heard his name pronounced as this little girl spoke it, with the soft “a.” It sounded very sweet to him.
“I’ll drive back for you before sundown, Janey,” said David, preparing to climb into the wagon.
“No,” objected Carey, regarding him with apprehension, “I want you to stay and play with me. Tell him to stay, mother.”
There was a regal carriage to the little head and an imperious note––the note of an only child––in her voice.
“Maybe David has other things to do than to play with little girls,” said her mother, “but, David, if you can stay, I wish you would.”102
“I should like to stay,” replied David earnestly, “but they expect me back, and Old Hundred is needed in the field.”
“Luke can drive your horse back, and we will see that you and Janey ride home.”
So Carey, with a hand to each of her new playmates, led them across the driveway to the rolling stretch of shaded lawn. The lady watched David as he submitted to be driven as a horse by the little girls and then constituted himself driver to his little team of ponies as he called them. Later, when they raced to the meadow, she saw him hold Janey back that Carey might win. Presently the lady was joined by her husband.
“Where is Carey?” he asked.
“She is having great sport with a pretty little girl and a guardian angel of a boy. Here they come!”
They were trooping across the lawn, the little girls adorned with blossom wreaths which David had woven for them.
“May we go down to the woods––the big woods?” asked Carey.103
“It’s too far for you to walk, dear,” remonstrated her mother.
“David says he’ll draw me in my little cart.”
“Who is it that was afraid to go into the big woods, and thought it was a forest filled with wild beasts and scary things?” demanded Mr. Winthrop.
The earnest eyes fixed on his were not at all abashed.
“With him, with David,” she said simply, “I would have no afraidments.”
“Afraidments?” he repeated perplexedly. “I am not sure I understand.”
“Don’t tease, Arthur; it’s a very good word,” interposed Mrs. Winthrop quickly. “It seems to have a different meaning from fear.”
“Come up here, David,” bade Mr. Winthrop, “and let me see what there is in you to inspire one with no ‘afraidments’.”
The boy came up on the steps, and did not falter under the keen but good-humored gaze.
“Do you like to play with little girls, David?”
“I like to play with these little girls,” admitted David.104
“And what do you like to do besides that?”
“I like to shoot.”
“Oh, a hunter?”
“No; I like to shoot at a mark.”
“And what else?”
“I like to read, and fish, and swim, and––”
“Eat ice cream!” finished Janey roguishly, showing her dimples.
The man caught her up in his arms.
“You are a darling, and I wish my little girl had such rosy cheeks. David, can you show me where there is good fishing?”
“Uncle Larimy can show you the best places. He knows where the bass live, and how to coax them to bite.”
“And will you take me to this wonderful person to-morrow?”
“Yes, sir.”
Carey now came out of the hall with her cart, and David drew her across the lawn, Janey dancing by his side. Down through the meadows wound a wheel-tracked road leading to a patch of dense woods which, to a little girl with a big imagination, could easily become a wild forest105infested with all sorts of nameless terrors––terrors that make one draw the bedclothes snugly over the head at night. She gave a little frightened cry as they came into the cool, olive depths.
“I am afraid, David. Take me!”
He lifted her to his shoulder, and her soft cheek nestled against his face.
“Now you are not afraid,” he said persuasively.
“No; but I would be if you put me down.”
They went farther into the oak depths, until they came to a fallen tree where they rested. Janey, investigating the forestry, finally discovered a bush with slender red twigs.
“Oh,” she cried, “now David will show you what beautiful things he can make for us.”
“I have no pins,” demurred David.
“I have,” triumphantly producing a paper of the needful from her pocket. “I always carry them now.”
David broke up the long twigs into short pieces, from which he skillfully fashioned little chairs and tables, discoursing the while to Carey on the beauty and safety of the woods. Finally106Carey acquired courage to hunt for wild flowers, though her hand remained close in David’s clasp.
When they returned to the house Carey gave a glowing account of the expedition.
“Sit down on the steps and rest, children,” proposed Mrs. Winthrop, “while Lucy prepares a little picnic dinner for you.”
“What will we do now, David?” appealed Carey, when they were seated on the porch.
“You mustn’t do anything but sit still,” admonished her mother. “You’ve done more now than you are used to doing in one day.”
“Davey will tell us a story,” suggested Janey.
“Yes, please, David,” urged Carey, coming to him and resting her eyes on his inquiringly, while her little hand confidently sought his knee. Instinctively and naturally his fingers closed upon it.
Embarrassed as he was at having a strange audience, he could not resist the child’s appeal.
“She’ll like the kind that you don’t,” he said musingly to Janey, “the kind about fairies and princes.”107
“Yes,” rejoined Carey.
So he fashioned a tale, partly from recollections of Andersen but mostly from his own fancy. As his imagination kindled, he forgot where he was. Inspired by the spellbound interest of the dainty little girl with the worshiping eyes, he achieved his masterpiece.
“Upon my word,” exclaimed Mr. Winthrop, “you are a veritable Scheherazade! You didn’t make up that story yourself?”
“Only part of it,” admitted David modestly.
When he and Janey started for home David politely delivered M’ri’s message of invitation for Carey to come to the farm on the morrow to play.
“It is going to be lovely here,” said the little girl happily. “And we are going to come every summer.”
Janey kissed her impulsively. “Good-by, Carey.”
“Good-by, Janey. Good-by, David.”
“Good-by,” he returned cheerily. Looking back, he saw her lips trembling. His gaze turned in perplexity to Mrs. Winthrop, whose108eyes were dancing. “She expects you to bid her good-by the way Janey did,” she explained.
“Oh!” said David, reddening, as two baby lips of scarlet were lifted naturally and expectantly to his.
As they drove away, the light feet of the horse making but little sound on the smooth road, Mrs. Winthrop’s clear treble was wafted after them.
“One can scarcely believe that his father was a convict and his mother a washerwoman.”
A lump came into the boy’s throat. Janey was very quiet on the way home. When they were alone she said to him, with troubled eyes:
“Davey, is Carey going to be your sweetheart?”
His laugh was reassuring.
“Why, Janey, I am just twice her age.”
“She is like a little doll, isn’t she, David?”
“No; like a little princess.”
The next morning Little Teacher came to show them her present from Joe.
“I am sure he chose a camera so I could take your pictures to send to him,” she declared.109
“Miss Rhody wants her picture taken in the black silk Joe gave her. If you will take it, she won’t have to spend the money he sent her,” said the thoughtful David.
Little Teacher was very enthusiastic over this proposition, and offered to accompany him at once to secure the picture. Miss Rhody was greatly excited over the event. Ever since the dress had been finished she had been a devotee at the shrine of two hooks in her closet from which was suspended the long-coveted garment, waiting for an occasion that would warrant its débût. She nervously dressed for the “likeness,” for which she assumed her primmest pose. A week later David sent Joe a picture of Miss Rhody standing stiff and straight on her back porch and arrayed, with all the glory of the lilies of the field, in her new silk.110
CHAPTER X
When the hot, close-cropped fields took on their first suggestion of autumn and a fuller note was heard in the requiem of the songbirds, when the twilights were of purple and the morning skies delicately mackereled in gray, David entered the little, red, country schoolhouse. M’ri’s tutelage and his sedulous application to Jud’s schoolbooks saved him from the ignominy of being classified with the younger children.
When he sat down to the ink-stained, pen-scratched desk that was to be his own, when he made compact piles of his new books and placed in the little groove in front of the inkwell his pen, pencils, and ruler, he turned to Little Teacher such a glowing face of ecstasy that she was quite inspired, and her sympathies and energies were at once enlisted in the cause of David’s education.
It was the beginning of a new world for him.111He studied with a concentration that made him oblivious to all that occurred about him, and he had to be reminded of calls to recitations by an individual summons. He fairly overwhelmed Little Teacher by his voracity for learning and a perseverance that vanquished all obstacles. He soon outstripped his class, and finally his young instructress was forced to bring forth her own textbooks to satisfy his avidity. He devoured them all speedily, and she then applied to the Judge for fuel from his library to feed her young furnace.
“He takes to learning as naturally as bees to blossoms,” she reported.
“He must ease off,” warned Barnabas. “Young hickory needs plenty of room for full growth.”
“No,” disagreed the Judge, “young hickory is as strong as wrought iron. He’s going to have a clear, keen mind to argue law cases.”
“I think not,” said M’ri. “You forget another quality of young hickory. No other wood burns with such brilliancy. David is going to be an author.”112
“I am afraid,” wrote Joe, “that Dave won’t be a first-class ranchman. He must be plum locoed with dreams.”
This prognostication reached David’s ears.
“Without dreams,” he argued to Barnabas, “one would be like the pigs.”
“Wal, now, Dave, mebby pigs dream. They sartain sleep a hull lot.”
David laughed appreciatively.
“Dave,” pursued Barnabas, “they’re all figgerin’ on your futur, and they’re a-figgerin’ wrong. Joe thinks you’ll take to ranchin’. You may––fer a spell. M’ri thinks you may write books. You may do even that––fer a spell. The Jedge counts on yer takin’ to the law like a duck does to water. You may, but law larnin’, cow punchin’, and story writin’ ’ll jest be steppin’ stuns to what I know you air goin’ ter be, and what I know is in you ter be.”
“What in the world is that, Uncle Barnabas?” asked David in surprise. “A farmer?”
“Farmer, nuthin’!” scoffed Barnabas. “Yer hain’t much on farmin’, Dave, though I will say yer furrers is allers straight, like everythin’113else you do. Yer straight yerself. No! young hickory can bend without breakin’, and thar’s jest one thing I want fer you to be.”
“What?” persisted the boy.
Barnabas whispered something.
The blood of the young country boy went like wine through his veins; his heart leaped with a big and mighty purpose.
“Now, remember, Dave,” cautioned Barnabas, “what all work and no play done to Jack. You git yer lessons perfect, and recite them, and read a leetle of an evenin’; the rest of the time I want yer to get out and cerkilate.”
November with its call to quiet woods came on, and David was eager to “cerkilate.” He became animated with the spirit of sport. Red-letter Saturdays were spent with Uncle Larimy, and the far-away echo of the hunter’s bullet and the scudding through the woods of startled game became new, sweet music to his ears. Rifle in hand, with dog shuffling at his heels or plunging ahead in search of game, the world was his. Life was very full and happy, save for the one inevitable sprig of bitter––Jud! The big bully of114a boy had learned that David was his equal physically and his superior mentally, but the fear of David and of David’s good standing kept him from venturing out in the open; so from cover he sought by all the arts known to craftiness to harass the younger boy, whose patience this test tried most sorely.
One day when Little Teacher had given him a verbose definition of the word “pestiferous,” David looked at her comprehendingly. “Like Jud,” he murmured.
Many a time his young arms ached to give Jud another thrashing, but his mother’s parting injunction restrained him.
“If only,” he sighed, “Jud belonged to some one else!”
He vainly sought to find the hair line that divided his sense of gratitude and his protection of self-respect.
Winter followed, and the farm work droned. It was a comfortable, cozy time, with breakfast served in the kitchen on a table spread with a gay, red cloth. Pennyroyal baked griddle-sized cakes, delivering them one at a time direct from115the stove to the consumer. The early hour of lamplight made long evenings, which were beguiled by lesson books and story-books, by an occasional skating carnival on the river, a coasting party at Long Hill, or a “surprise” on some hospitable neighbor.
One morning he came into school with face and eyes aglow with something more than the mere delight of living. It meant mischief, pure and simple, but Little Teacher was not always discerning. She gave him a welcoming smile of sheer sympathy with his mood. She didn’t smile, later, when the schoolroom was distracted by the sound of raucous laughter, feminine screams, and a fluttering of skirts as the girls scrambled to standing posture in their chairs. Astonished, she looked for the cause. The cause came her way, and the pupils had a fresh example of the miracles wrought by a mouse, for Little Teacher, usually the personification of dignity and repose, screamed lustily and scudded chairward with as much rapidity as that displayed by the scurrying mouse as it chased for the corner and disappeared through a knothole.116
As soon as the noiseful glee had subsided, Little Teacher sought to recover her prided self-possession. In a voice resonant with sternness, she commanded silence, gazing wrathfully by chance at little Tim Wiggins.
“’T was David done it,” he said in deprecating self-defense, imagining himself accused.
“David Dunne,” demanded Little Teacher, “did you bring that mouse to school?”
“He brung it and let it out on purpose,” informed Tim eagerly.
Little Teacher never encouraged talebearing, but she was so discomfited by the exposure of the ruling weakness peculiar to her sex that she decided to discipline her favorite pupil upon his acknowledgment of guilt.
“You may bring your books and sit on the platform,” she ordered indignantly.
David did not in the least mind his assignment to so prominent a position, but he did mind Little Teacher’s attitude toward him throughout the day. He sought to propitiate her by coming to her assistance in many little tasks, but she persistently ignored his overtures. He then ventured117to seek enlightenment regarding his studies, but she coldly informed him he could remain after school to ask his questions.
David began to feel troubled, and looked out of the window for an inspiration. He found one in the form of big, brawny, Jim Block––“Teacher’s Jim,” as the school children all called him.
“There goes Teacher’s Jim,” sang David,soto voce.
The shot told. For the second time that day Little Teacher showed outward and visible signs of an inward disturbance. With a blush she turned quickly to the window and watched with expressive eyes the stalwart figure striding over the rough-frozen road.
In an instant, however, she had recalled herself to earth, and David’s dancing eyes renewed her hostility toward him. Toward the end of the day she began to feel somewhat appeased by his docility and evident repentance. Her manner had perceptibly changed by the time the closing exercise began. This was the writing of words on the blackboard for the pupils to use118in sentences. She pointed to the first word, “income.”
“Who can make a sentence and use that word correctly?” she asked.
“Do call on Tim,” whispered David. “He so loves to be the first to tell anything.”
She smiled her appreciation of Tim’s prominent characteristic, and looked at the youngster, who was wringing his hand in an agony of eagerness. She gave him the floor, and he jumped to his feet in triumph, yelling:
“In come a mouse!”
This was too much for David’s composure, and he gave way to an infectious fit of laughter, in which the pupils joined.
Little Teacher found the allusion personal and uncomfortable. She at once assumed her former distant mien, demanding David’s presence after school closed.
“You have no gratitude, David,” she stated emphatically.
The boy winced, and his eyes darkened with concern, as he remembered his mother’s parting injunction.119
Little Teacher softened slightly.
“You are sorry, aren’t you, David?” she asked gently.
He looked at her meditatively.
“No, Teacher,” he answered quietly.
She flushed angrily.
“David Dunne, you may go home, and you needn’t come back to school again until you tell me you are sorry.”
David took his books and walked serenely from the room. He went home by the way of Jim Block’s farm.
“Hullo, Dave!” called Big Jim, who was in the barnyard.
“Hello, Jim! I came to tell you some good news. You said if you were only sure there was something Teacher was afraid of, you wouldn’t feel so scared of her.”
“Well,” prompted Jim eagerly.
“I thought I’d find out for you, so I took a mouse to school and let it loose.”
“Gee!”
David then related the occurrences of the morning, not omitting the look in Little120Teacher’s eyes when she beheld Jim from the window.
“I’ll hook up this very night and go to see her,” confided Jim.
“Be sure you do, Jim. If you find your courage slipping, just remember that you owe it to me, because she won’t let me come back to school unless she knows why I wasn’t sorry.”
“I give you my word, Dave,” said Jim earnestly.
The next morning Little Teacher stopped at the Brumble farm.
“I came this way to walk to school with you and Janey,” she said sweetly and significantly to David.
When they reached the road, and Janey had gone back to get her sled, Little Teacher looked up and caught the amused twinkle in David’s eye. A wave of conscious red overspread her cheeks.
“Must I say I am sorry now?” he asked.
“David Dunne, there are things you understand which you never learned from books.”121
CHAPTER XI
Late spring brought preparations for M’ri’s wedding. Rhody Crabbe’s needle and fingers flew in rapturous speed, and there was likewise engaged a seamstress from Lafferton. Rhody had begged for the making of the wedding gown, and when it was finished David went to fetch it home.
“It’s almost done, David, and you tell M’ri the last stitch was a loveknot. It’s most a year sence you wuz here afore, a-waitin’ fer her blue waist tew be finished. Remember, don’t you, David?”
He remembered, and as she stitched he sat silently reviewing that year, the comforts received, the pleasures pursued, and, best of all, the many things he had learned, but the recollection that a year ago his mother had been living brought a rush of sad memories and blotted out happier thoughts.
“I wish yer ma could hev seen Mart and M’ri122merried. She was orful disapp’inted when they broke off.”
There was no reply. Rhody’s sharp little eyes, in upward glance, spied the trickling tear; she looked quickly away and stitched in furious haste.
“But, my!” she continued, as if there had been no pause, “how glad she would be to know ’t was you as fetched it around.”
David looked up, diverted and inquiring.
“Yes; I learnt it from M’ri. She told me about the flowers you give him. I thought it was jest sweet in you, David. You done good work thar.”
“Miss Rhody,” said David earnestly, “maybe some day I can get you a sweetheart.”
“’T ain’t no use, David,” she sighed. “No one wants a plain critter like me.”
“Lots of them don’t marry for looks,” argued David sagely. “Besides, you look fine in your black silk, and your hair crimped. Joe thinks your picture is great. He’s got it on a shelf over his fireplace at the ranch.”
“Most likely some cowboy’ll see it and lose123his heart,” laughed Miss Rhody, “but thar, the weddin’ dress is all done. You go home and quit thinkin’ about gittin’ me a man. I ain’t ha’nted by the thought of endin’ single.”
Great preparations for the wedding progressed at the Brumble farm. For a week Pennyroyal whipped up eggs and sugar, and David ransacked the woods for evergreens and berries with which to decorate the big barn, where the dance after the wedding was to take place.
The old farmhouse was filled to overflowing on the night of the wedding. After the ceremony, Miss Rhody, resplendent in the black silk and waving hair loosed from the crimping pins that had confined it for two days and nights, came up to David.
“My, David, I’ve got the funniest all over feelin’ from seein’ Mart and M’ri merried! I was orful afeerd I’d cry.”
“Sit down, Miss Rhody,” said David, gallantly bringing her a chair.
“Didn’t M’ri look perfeckly beyewtiful?” she continued, after accomplishing the pirouette124that prevented creases. “And Mart, he looked that proud, and solemn too. It made me think of that gal when she spoke ‘Curfew shall not ring tewnight’ at the schoolhouse. Every one looks fine. I hain’t seen Barnabas so fussed up sence Libby Sukes’ funyral. It makes him look real spry. And whoever got Larimer Sasser to perk up and put on a starched shirt!”
“I think,” confided David, “that Penny got after him. She had him in a corner when he came, and she tied his necktie so tight I was afraid she would choke him.”
“Look at old Miss Pankey, David. She, as rich as they make ’em, and a-wearin’ that old silk! It looks as ef it hed bin hung up fer you and Jud to shoot at. Ain’t she a-glarin’ and a-sniffin’ at me, though? Say, David, you write Joe that if M’ri did look the purtiest of any one that my dress cost more’n any one’s here, and showed it, too. I hope thar’ll be a lot of occasions to wear it to this summer. M’ri is a-goin’ to give a reception when she gits back from her tower, and that’ll be one thing to wear it at. Ain’t Jud got a mean look? He’s as crooked125as a dog’s hind leg. But, say, David, that’s a fine suit you’re a-wearin’. You look handsome. Thar ain’t a stingy hair on Barnabas’ head. He’s doin’ jest as good by you as he is by Jud. Don’t little Janey look like an angel in white, and them lovely beads Joe give her? I can’t think of nothin’ else but that little Eva you read me about. I shouldn’t wonder a bit, David, if I come to yer and Janey’s weddin’ yet!” she said, as Janey came dancing up to them.
A slow flush mounted to his forehead, but Janey laughed merrily.
“I’ve promised Joe I’d wait for him,” she said roguishly.
“She’s only foolin’ and so wuz he,” quickly spoke Miss Rhody, seeing the hurt look in David’s eyes. “Barnabas,” she asked, stopping him as he passed, “you air a-goin’ to miss M’ri turrible. You could never manige if it wa’n’t fer Penny. Won’t she hev the time of her life cleanin’ up after this weddin’? She’ll enjoy it more’n she did gettin’ ready fer it.”
“I hope Penny won’t go to gittin’ merried––not till Janey’s growed up.”126
“David’s a great help to you, too, Barnabas.”
“Dave! I don’t know how I ever got along afore he came. He’s so willin’ and so honest. He’s as good as gold. Only fault he’s got is a quick temper. He’s doin’ purty fair with it, though. If only Jud––”
He stopped, with a sigh, and Rhody hastened to change the subject.
“You’re a-lookin’ spry to-night, Barnabas. I hain’t seen you look so spruce in a long time.”
“You look mighty tasty yerself, Rhody.”
This interchange of compliments was interrupted by the announcement of supper.
“I never set down to sech a repast,” thought Miss Rhody. “I’m glad I didn’t feed much to-day. I don’t know whether to take chickin twice, or to try all them meltin’, flaky lookin’ pies. And jest see them layer cakes!”
After supper adjournment was made to the barn, where the fiddles were already swinging madly. Every one caught the spirit, and even Miss Rhody finally succumbed to Barnabas’ insistence. Pennyroyal captured Uncle Larimy, and when Janey whirled away in the arms of a127schoolmate, David, who had never learned to dance, stood isolated. He felt lonely and depressed, and recalled the expression in which Joe Forbes had explained life after he had acquired a stepmother. “I was always on the edge of the fireside,” he had said.
“Dave,” expostulated Uncle Barnabas, as soon as he could get his breath after the last dance, “you’d better eddicate yer heels as well as yer head. It’s unnateral fer a colt and a boy not to kick up their heels. You don’t never want to be a looker-on at nuthin’ excep’ from ch’ice. You’d orter be a stand-in on everything that’s a-goin’ instead of a stand-by. The stand-bys never git nowhar.”128
PART TWO
CHAPTER I
David Dunne at eighteen was graduated from the high school in Lafferton after five colorless years in which study and farm work alternated. Throughout this period he had continued to incur the rancor of Jud, whose youthful scrapes had gradually developed into brawls and carousals. The Judge periodically extricated him from serious entanglements, and Barnabas continued optimistic in his expectations of a time when Jud should “settle.” On one occasion Jud sneeringly accused David of “working the old man for a share in the farm,” and taunted him with the fact that he was big enough and strong enough to hustle for himself without living on charity. David started on a tramp through the woods to face the old issue and decide his fate. He had then one more year before he could finish school and carry out a long-cherished dream of college.129
He was at a loss to know just where to turn at the present time for a home where he could work for his board and attend school. The Judge and M’ri had gone abroad; Joe was on his ranch; the farmers needed no additional help.
He had been walking swiftly in unison with his thoughts, and when he came out of the woods into the open he was only a mile downstream from town. Upon the river bank stood Uncle Larimy, skillfully swirling his line.
“Wanter try yer luck, Dave?”
“I have no luck just now, Uncle Larimy,” replied the boy sadly.
Uncle Larimy shot him a quick, sidelong glance.
“Then move on, Dave, and chase arter it. Thar’s allers luck somewhar. Jest like fishin’. You can’t set in one spot and wait for luck tew come to you like old Zeke Foss does. You must keep a-castin’.”
“I don’t know where to cast, Uncle Larimy.”
Uncle Larimy pondered. He knew that Jud was home, and he divined David’s trend of thought.130
“You can’t stick to a plank allers, Dave, ef you wanter amount tew anything. Strike out bold, and swim without any life presarvers. You might jest as well be a sleepy old cat in a corner as to go smoothsailin’ through life.”
“I feel that I have got to strike out, and at once, Uncle Larimy, but I don’t just know where to strike.”
“Wal, Dave, it’s what we’ve all got to find out fer ourselves. It’s a leap in the dark like, and ef you don’t land nowhere, take another leap, and keep a-goin’ somewhar.”
David wended his way homeward, pondering over Uncle Larimy’s philosophy. When he went with Barnabas to do the milking that night he broached the subject of leaving the farm.
“I know how Jud feels about my being here, Uncle Barnabas.”
“What did he say to you?” asked the old man anxiously.
“Nothing. I overheard a part of your conversation. He is right. And if I stay here, he will run away to sea. He told the fellows in Lafferton he would.”131
“You are going to stay, Dave.”
“You won’t like to think you drove your son away. If he gets into trouble, both you and I will feel we are to blame.”
“Dave, I see why the Jedge hez got it all cut out fer you to be a lawyer. You’ve got the argyin’ habit strong. But you can’t argue me into what I see is wrong. This is the place fer you to be, and Jud ’ll hev to come outen his spell.”
“Then let me go away until he does. You must give him every chance.”
“Where’ll you go?” asked Barnabas curiously.
“I don’t know, yet,” said the boy, “but I’ll think out a plan to-night.”
It was Jud, after all, who cut the Gordian knot, and made one of his welcome disappearances, which lasted until David was ready to start in college. His savings, that he had accumulated by field work in the summers and a very successful poultry business for six years, netted him four hundred dollars.
“One hundred dollars for each year,” he132thought exultantly. “That will be ample with the work I shall find to do.”
Then he made known to his friends his long-cherished scheme of working his way through college. The Judge laughed.
“Your four hundred dollars, David, will barely get you through the first year. After that, I shall gladly pay your expenses, for as soon as you are admitted to the bar you are to come into my office, of course.”