Dennison Grant Part 29

"Wilson what?"

"Just Wilson."

"What does your mother call you?"

"Just Wilson. Sometimes daddy calls me Bill."

"Oh!"

"What's your name?"

"Call me The Man on the Hill."

"Do you live on the hill?"

"Yes."

"Is that your house?"

"Yes."

"Did you make it?"

"Yes."

"All yourself?"

"No. Peter helped me."

"Who's Peter?"

"He is the man who helped me."

"Oh!"

These credentials exchanged, the boy fell silent, while Grant looked down upon him with a whimsical admixture of humor and tenderness.

Suddenly, without a word, the boy dashed as fast as his legs could carry him to the end of the field, and plunged into a clump of bushes. In a moment he emerged with something brown and chubby in his arms.

"He's my teddy," he said to Grant. "He was watching in the bushes to see if you were a nice man."

"And am I?" Grant was tempted to ask.

"Yes." There was no evasion about Wilson. He approved of his new acquaintance, and said so.

"Let us give teddy a ride on Prince?"

"Let's!"

Grant carefully arranged teddy on the horse's hames, and the boy clapped his hands with delight.

"Now let us all go for a ride. You will sit on my knee, and teddy will drive Prince."

He took the boy carefully on his knee, driving with one hand and holding him in place with the other. The little body resting confidently against his side was a new experience for Grant.

"We must drive carefully," he remarked. "Here and there are big stones hidden in the gra.s.s. If we were to hit one it might dump us off."

The little chap chuckled. "Nothing could dump you off," he said.

Grant reflected that such implicit and unwarranted confidence implied a great responsibility, and he drove with corresponding care. A mishap now might nip this very delightful little bud of hero-wors.h.i.+p.

They turned the end of the furrow with a fine jingle of loose trace-chains, and Prince trotted a little on account of being on the outer edge of the semicircle. The boy clapped his hands again as teddy bounced up and down on the great shoulders.

"Have you a little boy?" he asked, when they were started again.

"Why, no," Grant confessed, laughing at the question.

"Why?"

There was no evading this childish inquisitor. He had a way of pursuing a subject to bedrock.

"Well, you see, I've no wife."

"No mother?"

"No--no wife. You see--"

"But I have a mother--"

"Of course, and she is your daddy's wife. You see they have to have that--"

Grant found himself getting into deep water, but the sharp little intellect had cut a corner and was now ahead of him.

"Then I'll be your little boy," he said, and, clambering up to Grant's shoulder pressed a kiss on his cheek. In a sudden burst of emotion Grant brought his team to a stop and clasped the little fellow in both his arms. For a moment everything seemed misty.

"And I have lived to be thirty-two years old and have never known what this meant," he said to himself.

"Daddy's hardly ever home, anyway," the boy added, naively.

"Where is your home?"

"Down beside the river. We live there in summer."

And so the conversation continued and the acquaintances.h.i.+p grew as man and boy plied back and forth on their mile-long furrow. At length it occurred to Grant that he should send Wilson home; the boy's long absence might be occasioning some uneasiness. They stopped at the end of the field and carefully removed teddy from his place of prestige, but just at that moment a horsefly buzzing about caused Prince to stamp impatiently, and the big hoof came down on the boy's foot. Wilson sent up a cry proportionate to the possibilities of the occasion, and Grant in alarm tore off the boot and stocking. Fortunately the soil had been soft, and the only damage done was a slight bruise across the upper part of the foot.

"There, there," said Grant, soothingly, caressing the injury with his fingers. "It will be all right in a minute. Prince didn't mean to do it, and besides, I've seen much worse than that at the war."

At the mention of war the boy suspended a cry half uttered.

"Were you at the war?" he demanded.