An Old Chester Secret Part 3

"On the road," said Johnny; "they ain't yours when they drop on the road."

"Say 'aren't,' Johnny," said Miss Lydia. "It isn't nice to say 'ain't.'"

"Why aren't they mine?" said the old man. He was towering up above the two little figures, his feet wide apart, his hands behind him, switching his cane back and forth like a tail.

"'Cause I've got 'em," Johnny explained, briefly.

"Ha! The nine-tenths! You'll be a lawyer, sir!" his grandfather said.

"Suppose I say, 'Give me some'?"

"I won't," said Johnny.

"Oh, you won't, eh? You'll be a politician!" Mr. Smith said.

"It isn't right to say, 'I won't,'" Miss Lydia corrected Johnny, panting.

Mr. Smith did not notice her nervousness; the boy's att.i.tude, legs wide apart, hands behind him, clutching the tongue of his express wagon, held his eye. "He's like me!" he thought, with a thrill.

"Isn't it right to say, 'I won't say I won't'?" Johnny countered.

"Jesuit!" Mr. Smith said, chuckling. "The church is the place for him, Miss Sampson."

"Anyway," Johnny said, crossly, "I _will not_ give any of my apples back. They're mine."

"How do you make that out?" said Mr. Smith. (And in an undertone to Miss Lydia, "No fool, eh?")

"Because I picked 'em up," said Johnny.

"Well, here's a quarter," said his grandfather, putting his hand in his pocket.

Johnny took the coin with an air of satisfaction, but even as he slid it into his pocket he took it out again.

"Looky here," he said. "I thought I'd buy a pony with it, but I don't mind paying you for your apples--" And he held out the quarter.

Mr. Smith laughed as he had not laughed for a long time. "You're a judge of horsefles.h.!.+" he said, and walked off, switching his tail behind him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I WILL NOT GIVE ANY OF MY APPLES BACK. THEY'RE MINE"]

The story-book plot should begin here--the rich grandfather meets the unacknowledged grandchild, loves him, and makes him his heir--and, of course, incidentally, showers his largess upon the poor and virtuous lady who has cared for the little foundling; so everybody lives happy and dies wealthy. This intelligent arrangement of fiction might have been carried out if only Miss Lydia had behaved differently! But about two years later her behavior--

"She's put a spoke in my wheel!" Mr. Smith told himself, blankly. It was when Johnny was eight that the spoke blocked the grandfather's progress. . . . He had gradually grown to know the boy very well, and, after much backing and filling in his own mind, decided to adopt him. He did not reach this decision easily, for there were risks in such an arrangement; resemblances might develop, and people might put two and two together! However, each time he decided that the risk was too great, a glimpse of Johnny--stealing a ride by hanging on behind his grandfather's victoria, or going in swimming in deeper water than some of the older boys were willing to essay, or, once, blacking another fellow's eye--such a glimpse of his own flesh and blood gave him courage. Courage gained the day when his grandson had scarlet fever and William King, meeting him after a call at Miss Lydia's, happened to say that Johnny was a pretty sick child. The new Mr. Smith felt his heart under his spreading white beard contract sharply.

"Sick! Very sick? Good G.o.d! the wet hen won't know how to take care of him!" His alarm was so obvious that Doctor King looked at him in surprise.

"You are fond of the little fellow?"

"Oh, I see him playing around my gate," Mr. Smith said, and walked off quickly, lest he should find himself urging more advice, or a nurse, or what not. "King would wonder what earthly difference it could make to me!" he said to himself, in a panic of secrecy. It made enough difference to cause him to write to his daughter: "I hear the child is very sick and may die. Congratulations to Robertson."

Mary, reading the cruel words and never guessing the anxiety which had dictated them, grew white with anger. "I will never forgive father!"

she said to herself, and went over to her husband and put her soft hands on his shoulders and kissed him.

"Carl," she said, "the--the little boy is sick"; his questioning look made her add, "Oh, he'll get well"--but she must have felt some unspoken recoil in her husband, for she cried out, in quick denial, "Of course I don't want anything to--to happen to him!"

They did not speak of Johnny's illness for two or three days; then Mary said, "If anything had happened, we should have heard by this time?"

And Carl said, "Oh, of course."

When Johnny was well again his grandfather's fear that Doctor King might "wonder," ebbed. "It's safe enough to take him," he said to himself; "he doesn't look like anybody. And if I adopt him I can see that he's properly educated--and it will scare Robertson to death!" he added, viciously, and showed his teeth. He even discussed adopting his grandchild with Doctor Lavendar:

"Mary hasn't done her duty," he said. "I've no grandchildren! I've a great mind to adopt some youngster. I'm fond of children."

"Good idea," said Doctor Lavendar.

"I've taken a fancy to that little rascal who lives just at my gate.

Bright youngster. Not a cowardly streak in him! Quick-tempered, I'm afraid. But _I_ never blame anybody for that! I've thought, once or twice, that I'd adopt him."

"And Miss Lydia, too?" Doctor Lavendar inquired, mildly.

"Oh, I should look after her, of course," said Mr. Smith. But it was still another six months before he really made up his mind. "I'll do it!" he said to himself. "But I suppose," he reflected, "I ought to tell Mary--and the skunk."

He went on to Philadelphia for the purpose of telling Mary, but he did it when Carl was not present.

Mary blenched. "Father, _don't_! People might--"

"d.a.m.n people! I like the boy. You're a coward, Mary, and so is--Robertson."

"No! He isn't! Carl isn't. I am."

"I won't compromise you," he ended, contemptuously. "Tell Robertson I mean to do it. If he has anything to say he can say it in a letter."

Then he kissed her perfunctorily and said, "Goo'-by--goo'-by," and took the night train for Mercer.

He lost no time when he got back to Old Chester in putting his plan through. The very next afternoon, knowing that Johnny would be at Doctor Lavendar's Collect Cla.s.s, he called on Miss Lydia. Miss Sampson's little house was more comfortable than it used to be; the quarterly check which came from "some one" patched up leaky roofs, and bought a new carpet, and did one or two other things; but it did not procure any luxuries, either for Johnny or for herself, and it never made Miss Lydia look like anything but a small, bedraggled bird; her black frizette still got crooked and dipped over one soft blue eye, and she was generally shabby--except on the rare occasions when she wore the blue silk--and her parlor always looked as if a wind had blown through it. "I wouldn't _touch_ their money for myself!" she used to think, and saved every cent to give to Johnny when he grew up.

Into her helter-skelter house came, on this Sat.u.r.day afternoon, her landlord. He had knocked on her front door with the gold head of his cane, and when she opened it he had said, "How do? How do?" and walked ahead of her into her little parlor. It was so little and he was so big that he seemed to fill the room.

Miss Lydia said, in a fluttered voice, "How do you do?"

"Miss Sampson," he said--he had seated himself in a chair that creaked under his ruddy bulk and he put both hands on the top of his cane; his black eyes were friendly and amused--"I've had it in mind for some time to have a little talk with you."

"Yes, sir," said Miss Lydia.

"I need not go back to--to a painful experience that we both remember."

Miss Lydia put her head on one side in a puzzled way, as if her memory had failed her.

"You will know that I appreciated your att.i.tude at that time. I appreciated it deeply."

Miss Lydia rolled her handkerchief into a wabbly lamplighter; she seemed to have nothing to say.