Wheat and Huckleberries Part 14

"And please let me go, too," said Mr. Hadley, glancing at the girl, and catching her quick responsive smile at her grandfather; "I should like it immensely."

"Why, to be sure, I should like it myself," said Deacon Saxon, promptly; "though there ain't anything there now but dirt and rocks. And I'll take you round by the old burying-ground and show you his grave, and the grave of my great-grandfather, John Saxon, that was killed by the Indians, if you want me to."

They had it settled in another minute, with Stella in the plan too. Mr.

Hadley was to call again in a few days, and they were all to take the trip together. And then the young man stayed a little longer, not talking of his ancestors now, but of things more modern; of Scotland with Stella; of her impressions of New England with Esther; and with the old gentleman of the summer home in a neighboring town, which the Hadleys had lately purchased. It seemed he had ridden over from there to-day. There was no chance to talk with Kate of anything. She had disappeared long ago.

"I'm afraid you'll think I've inherited the staying qualities of my great-great-grandfather," he said, rising at last. "Really, I don't wonder he found it hard to get away from here." And then he bowed himself out with renewed expressions of grat.i.tude for the information he had received, and of delight in that trip that was coming.

"A most estimable young man," said Ruel Saxon, when he had ridden away.

"I think he's the most agreeable young man I ever saw," said Esther, warmly, and Stella added, "Quite _au fait_; but I mean to find out the next time he comes whether he really knows anything about art."

From Mr. Philip Hadley to Miss Katharine Saxon was a far cry, but the latter had a genius for supplying contrasts, and she furnished one at that moment by appearing suddenly at the door. Aunt Elsie, who had been picking raspberries in the garden, was with her.

"Well, Katharine," exclaimed her brother, hastening to meet her, "'pears to me you're getting pretty smart to come walking all the way from your house this hot day."

"I always had the name of being smart, Ruel," said the old lady, seating herself, and proceeding with much vigor to use a feather fan made of a partridge tail, which hung at her belt; "but I shouldn't have taken the trouble to show it by walking up here to-day if I hadn't had an errand.

Mary 'Liza wants to go home for a couple o' days-her sister's going to get married-and I s'pose I or' to have somebody in the house with me.

Not that I'm 'fraid of anything," she added, "but I s'pose there'd be a terrible to-do in the town if I should mind my own business and die in my bed some night without putting anybody to any trouble about it. So I thought, long 's you've got so many folks up here just now, I'd see if one of the girls was a mind to come down and stay with me."

She had been facing her brother as she talked, but she turned toward Esther with the last words.

The girl's face lighted with an instant pleasure. "Let _me_ come, Aunt Katharine," she said. "I should like to, dearly."

There was a gleam of satisfaction in Aunt Katharine's eyes. "I'd be much obleeged to you to do it," she said promptly.

"But Aunt Katharine," exclaimed Aunt Elsie, "don't you think you'd better come here and stay with us? We should like to have you, and it's a long time since you slept in your old room."

"I don't care anything particular about old rooms," said Miss Saxon.

"I'm beholden to you, Elsie; but I'd rather be in my own house, long 's I can have somebody with me."

"I s'pose you've got Solomon Ridgeway there yet," observed her brother, maliciously. "You don't seem to count much on him, but mebbe you're afraid of robbers, with all his jewellery in the house."

She took no notice of the sarcasm. "Solomon's been gone 'most a week,"

she said. "Took a notion he wanted to be back at the farm again."

"So he's gone back to the poor'us, has he?" said the old gentleman.

"Well, it's the place for him, poor afflicted cretur!"

She threw up her head with the quick impatient motion. "Dreadful 'flicted, Ruel," she said. "He's a leetle the happiest man I know."

"Hm," grunted her brother; "happy because he hain't got sense enough to know his own situation. He thinks he's rich, when all he's got wouldn't buy him a week's victuals and a suit o' clothes."

Miss Saxon's eyes narrowed to the hawk-like expression which was common in her controversies with her brother. "Oh, he's crazy, of course," she said, with an inexpressible dryness in her voice; "thinks he's rich when he's poor! But you didn't call Squire Ethan crazy when he had so much money he didn't know what to do with it, and was so 'fraid he'd come to want that he da.s.sn't give a cent of it away, or let his own folks have enough to live on."

"I ain't excusing Squire Ethan," said the deacon, bridling. "He made a G.o.d of his money, and he'll be held responsible for it. But Solomon Ridgeway ain't half witted. He's been crack-brained for the last forty years, and you know it."

The coolness of her manner increased with his rising heat. "Oh, Solomon's daft, Ruel," she said in her politest manner. "We won't argy about _that_. A man _must_ be daft that takes his wife's death so hard it eeny most kills him, and he stays single all the rest of his life. A man that had full sense would be courting some other woman inside a year."

The deacon's eyes kindled. "You talk like one of the foolish women, Katharine," he said sharply. "A man ain't compelled to stay single all the rest of his days because the Lord's seen fit to take away his wife.

The Bible says it ain't good for man to be alone, and 'whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing.'"

She laughed her thin mocking laugh. "And the more he has of 'em the better, I s'pose! You don't happen to remember, do you, any place where it says she that finds a husband finds a good thing?"

Apparently the exact verse was not at hand, but Ruel Saxon was prepared without it. "There are some things that folks with common sense are s'posed to know without being told," he said tartly.

The words had come so fast from both sides that even Aunt Elsie had not been able to interpose till this moment. She seized the pause now with hurrying eagerness. "Aunt Katharine," she said, "here you are sitting all this time with your bonnet on. You must take it off and stay to supper with us."

The old woman rose and untied the strings. "Thank ye kindly, Elsie," she said; "I b'lieve I will."

CHAPTER IX

A GLIMPSE FROM THE INSIDE

In the cool of the day Aunt Katharine and Esther walked together across the fields to the little house on the county road. The sunset was throbbing itself out above the hills in a glory of crimson and gold, and the girl's face seemed to have caught the s.h.i.+ning as she moved tranquilly toward it.

In the doorway of the barn Tom and Kate watched them go, and exchanged comments with their usual frankness. It was their favorite place for discussion-that and the wood-pile-and few were the subjects of current interest which did not receive a tossing back and forth at their hands when the day's work was done.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "TOM AND KATE WATCHED THEM GO."]

"That's an uncommon queer thing for Aunt Katharine to do," observed Tom.

"When she's been left alone before she's always got one of the Riley girls to stay there and paid her for doing it. She must have taken a s.h.i.+ne to Esther. Maybe she thinks she can work her round to some of her notions."

Kate shook her head. "Esther isn't her sort of person at all," she said.

"Aunt Katharine would take somebody that's strong-minded like herself if she wanted a follower in those things."

Tom flicked a kernel of corn at a swallow that swooped down from a beam above his head, and remarked carelessly, "Maybe strong-minded folks had rather have those that ain't so strong-minded to work on."

There was something in this that gave a pa.s.sing uneasiness to the look in Kate's black eyes. She was silent a moment, then said with emphasis, "Well, I'll risk Esther Northmore;" and a minute later, oddly enough, she was talking of Morton Elwell, and wondering what he found to do now that wheat harvest and haying were over at home.

"If he's out of a job I wish he'd come round this way," observed Tom.

"We need another hand in our meadow, and we'd set him to work right off."

"And supply him with a scythe to work with, I suppose," said Kate, scornfully. "I imagine Mort Elwell! He rides a mowing machine when _he_ cuts gra.s.s."

"Well, he couldn't ride it in our meadow," retorted Tom. "There isn't a Hoosier on top of the ground that could do it. I don't care how smart he is." (He had been tantalized at frequent intervals ever since Kate's coming by accounts of Morton Elwell's smartness.) "A scythe is the only thing that'll work in a place like that."

"Out our way they wouldn't have such a place," said Kate, loftily.

"They'd put in tile and drain it, if they were going to use the ground at all."

"A nice job they'd have of it," grunted Tom; and then he remarked incidentally: "I heard Esther tell Stella the other day that our meadow was the prettiest place she ever saw. They were sitting by the brook, and she said it made her sick to think how your creek at home looked, all so brown and muddy."

This was a manifest digression, but Tom had a genius for that, and a quotation from Esther bearing on the attractions of New England was a missile he never failed to use, when it came to his hand in discussion with Kate. She looked annoyed for a minute. There was no denying that the creek at home was a sorry-looking stream beside that beautiful meadow brook, with its clear pebbly bottom. But she recovered herself in another moment.

"Oh, your brook is pretty, of course," she said graciously, "but it's all in the way you look at it. For my part I don't mind having a good rich brown in the color of ours. It shows that the land isn't all rocks; that there's something in it soft enough to wash down."