A Busy Year at the Old Squire's Part 40

"Well, I never! Can it be possible?" grandmother Ruth exclaimed. "Why, you've grown up, of course!"

Grown up, in good truth, and a very prosperous-looking young man was Emilio. He evidently remembered well his sojourn with us years ago, and, moreover, remembered it with pleasure; for now he grasped the old Squire's hand warmly and then, laughing joyously, held grandmother Ruth's in both his own.

"But where have you been all this time?" the old Squire exclaimed.

"I live now in Boston. Not long did I sell the images. I leave my _padrone_. He was hard man, not so ver bad, but ver poor. Then I have a cart and sell fruit, banan, orange, apple, in de street, four year.

After that I have fruit stand on Tremont Street three year. I do ver well, and have five fruit stands; and now I buy apples to send to Genoa and Messina."

"But Tomaso, where's little Tomaso?" grandmother Ruth exclaimed.

Emilio's face saddened. "Tomaso he die," said he and shook his head. "He tak bad colds and have cough two year. Doctors said he have no chance in dis climate. I send him home to Napoli, and he die. But America fine place," Emilio added, as if defending our climate. "Good country.

Everybody do well here."

We had Emilio as a guest at our midday meal that day--quite a different Emilio from the pinched little fellow of thirteen years before. He glanced round the old dining-room.

"Here where I sit dat first night!" he cried, laughing like a boy. "Big old clock right over there, Tomaso dis side of me, and young, kind, pretty girl on other side. All smile so kind to us; and oh, how good dat warm, nice food taste, we so hongry!"

He remembered every detail of his stay. The red apples that we had given him seemed to have impressed him especially; neither of the boys had ever eaten an apple before.

"Whole big basketful you fetch up from de cellar and say tak all you want," he ran on, still laughing. "Naver any apple taste like dose, so beeg, so red!"

As we sat and talked he told us of his present business and how he had tried the then novel experiment of s.h.i.+pping small lots of New England apples to Italy. There had been doubt whether the apples would bear the voyage and arrive in sound condition, but he had no trouble when the fruit was carefully selected and well put up. That led him to inquire about our apple crop and to explain that that was perhaps one of the reasons--not the only one--for his visit.

"I know you raise good apples," he said. "I like to buy them."

We told him how many we had, and he asked what price we expected to get.

We answered that the local dealers had already fixed the price that fall at two dollars a barrel.

"I will pay you two dollars and a half," Emilio said without a moment's hesitation.

"But, Emilio," the old Squire put in, "we couldn't ask more than the market price."

"Ah, but you have good apples!" he replied. "I know how dose apples taste, and I know dey will be well barreled. No wormy apples, no bruised apples. Dey worf more because good honest man put dem up. I pay you two fifty."

We s.h.i.+pped the entire lot to him the following week and received prompt payment. Incidentally, we learned that Foresi's rating as a business man was high, and that he enjoyed the reputation of being an honorable dealer. For many years--as long as he was in the business, in fact--we sent him choice lots of winter fruit, for which he always insisted on paying a price considerably in advance of the market quotations.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

A JANUARY THAW

Just before school closed a disagreeable incident occurred.

It was one of the few times that the old Squire really reproved us sternly. Often, of course, he had to caution us a little, or speak to us about our conduct; but he usually did it in an easy, tolerant way, ending with a laugh or a joke. But that time he was in earnest.

He had come home that night just at dark from Three Rivers, in Canada, where he was engaged in a lumbering enterprise. He had been gone a fortnight, and during his absence Addison, Halstead and I had been doing the farm ch.o.r.es. The drive from the railway stations, on that bleak January afternoon had chilled the old gentleman, and he went directly into the sitting-room to get warm. So it was not until he came out to sit down to supper with us that he noticed a vacant chair at table.

"Where is Halstead?" he asked. "Isn't Halstead at home?"

No one answered at first; none of us liked to tell him what had happened. We had always found our cousin Halstead hard to get on with.

Lately he had been complaining to us that he ought to be paid wages for his labor, when, as a matter of fact, what he did at the farm never half repaid the old Squire for his board, clothes and the trouble he gave.

During the old gentleman's absence that winter Halstead had become worse than ever and had also begun making trouble at the district school.

His special crony at school was Alfred Batchelder, who had an extremely bad influence on him. Alfred was a genius at instigating mischief, and he and Halstead played an odious prank at the schoolhouse, as a result of which the school committee suspended them for three weeks.

That was unfortunate, for it turned the boys loose to run about in company. Usually they quarreled by the time they had been together half a day; but this time there seemed to be a special bond between them, and they hatched a secret project to go off trapping up in the great woods.

They intended to stay until spring, when they would reappear with five hundred dollar's worth of fur!

Addison and I guessed that something of the sort was in the wind, for we noticed that Halstead was collecting old traps and that he was oiling a gun he called his. We also missed two thick horse blankets from the stable and a large hand sled. A frozen quarter of beef also disappeared from the wagon-house chamber.

"Let him go, and good riddance," Addison said, and we decided not to tell grandmother or the girls what we suspected. In fact, I fear that we hoped Halstead would go.

The following Friday afternoon while the rest of us were at school both boys disappeared. That evening Mrs. Batchelder sent over to inquire whether Alfred was at our house. Halstead, to his credit, had shown that he did not wish grandmother to worry about him. Shortly before two o'clock that afternoon, he had come hastily to the sitting-room door, and said, "Good-by, gram. I'm going away for a spell. Don't worry."

Then, shutting the door, he had run off before she could reply or ask a question.

When we got home from school that night, Addison and I found traces of the runaways. There had been rain the week before, followed by a hard freeze and snow squalls, which had left a film of light snow on the hard crust beneath. At the rear of the west barn we found the tracks of a hand sled leading off across the fields toward the woods.

"Gone hunting, I guess," said Addison. "They are probably heading for the Old Slave's Farm, or for Adger's lumber camp. Let them go. They'll be sick to death of it in a week."

I felt much the same about it; but grandmother and Theodora were not a little disturbed. Ellen, however, sided with Addison. "Halse will be back by to-morrow night," she said. "He and Alfred will have a spat by that time."

Sat.u.r.day and Sunday pa.s.sed, however, and then all the following week, with no word from them.

On Tuesday evening, when they had been gone eleven days, Mrs. Batchelder hastened in with alarming news for us. She had had a letter from Alfred, she said, written from Berlin Falls in New Hamps.h.i.+re, where he had gone to work in a mill; but he had not said one word about Halstead!

"I don't think they could have gone off together," she said, and she read Alfred's letter aloud to us, or seemed to do so, but did not hand it to any of us to read.

We had never trusted Mrs. Batchelder implicitly; and a long time afterwards it came out that there was one sentence in that letter that she had not read to us. It was this: "Don't say anything to any of them about Halstead." Guessing that there had been trouble of some kind between the boys, she was frightened; to s.h.i.+eld Alfred she had hurried over with the letter, and had tried to make us believe that the boys had not gone off together.

Addison and I still thought that the boys had set out in company, though we did not know what to make of Alfred's letter. We were waiting in that disturbed state of mind, hoping to hear something from Alfred that would clear up the mystery, when the old Squire came home.

"He has gone away, sir," Addison said at last, when the old gentleman inquired for Halstead at supper.

"Gone away? Where? What for?" the old gentleman asked in much astonishment; and then the whole story had to be told him.

The old Squire heard it through without saying much. When we had finished, he asked, "Did you know that Halstead meant to go away?"

"We did not know for certain, sir," Addison replied.

"Still, you both knew something about it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did either one of you do anything to prevent it?"