"I shall carry them home and hatch them under a hen," said Addison.
"I guess the old hen will cackle when she sees what she has hatched,"
exclaimed Ellen, laughing.
While we were looking at them, a noise in the brush startled us, and, turning hastily, we saw a young man wearing a glazed cap standing at the border of alders, near the brook. His appearance startled us somewhat.
Presently we noticed that he was beckoning, evidently to Halstead, and that the latter seemed very uneasy; he bent over the eggs and pretended not to see any one. But the fellow continued loitering there; and at last Halse jumped up, saying, "I'll see what he wants, I guess," and went out to the alders. The man stepped back and they both disappeared among the bushes.
We stood waiting for some minutes, then started to go slowly out through the pines into the pasture and homeward with our trophies.
"Who could that have been?" Ellen exclaimed to Addison in a low voice; but Addison merely shook his head.
Somewhat to our surprise, we found Halstead at home in advance of us; he had already sat down to supper with Gramp and Gram.
That night, after milking was done and we had gone up-stairs to our room, Halstead said to me, "I suppose you saw that fellow that came to see me down at the pines this afternoon."
I said yes.
"That was a poor chap I promised to buy some seed-corn for," Halse went on, hastily. "He came around to get the money; and I'm going to try to make it up somehow, though I haven't got the money just now. Couldn't let me have seventy-five cents, could you?"
I said that I could, for I felt relieved to think that the mysterious person was merely a poor farmer.
Halstead regarded me for some moments. "I wish you would ask Doad and Nell if they won't lend me a quarter apiece," he said at length. "I can just make it up, if you would. I hate to ask them myself. But I will give it back to you in the course of a month.
"I wouldn't say anything to Ad about it," Halstead went on; "Ad don't like me and I don't want to feel beholden to him for anything."
I replied that I did not feel quite well enough acquainted with Theodora and Ellen yet, to ask such a favor; but as Halstead seemed to feel hurt that I hesitated about it, I finally promised to speak to them, although I disliked the errand.
Next day was Sunday, and after breakfast we all set off, except Ellen and Gram, to go to the old meeting-house, called the "chapel," three miles distant, on a road leading westward from the farm. It was a very hilly road, and we three boys walked; but Theodora and Wealthy rode with the Old Squire in the two-seated wagon.
I had been accustomed to go to church in a more handsomely furnished edifice, and the old chapel seemed, at first, very rude to me. It was a weather-beaten structure, having a high gallery across one end and an almost equally high pulpit at the other. The floor was bare, and the box-shaped pews were not many of them provided with cushions. There was a great clatter of feet when the people came in, and the roof gave back hollow echoes.
The Old Squire and Gram were nominally Congregationalists, and the old meeting-house had once belonged to that sect; but becoming reduced in numbers, and being unable to support a clergyman of that denomination during the entire year, they had allowed the Methodists, and finally the Second Adventists, to hold meetings there.
The Old Squire, indeed, was by no means a strict sectarian; he attended the Methodist service and sometimes, not often, the Adventist. Gram was more conservative and did not go, as a rule, except when there was a Congregationalist minister, although she always spoke well of the Methodists; and the Methodist Elder Witham (the same who took the Vermifuge) frequently visited at the farm.
"All Christians are good people," Gramp was accustomed to say.
"Well," Gram would reply, placidly, "I cannot help believing that we (meaning the Congregationalists) are in the right."
The Old Squire's chief objection to the Adventists was, that their preachers had come into the place uninvited, and, by their zealous efforts, had caused a considerable number to withdraw from the church, thus breaking up the Congregationalist Society in that town.
"I do not take it upon me to say who is right and who is wrong on these great religious questions," the old gentleman used to remark, when the subject came up. "But I disapprove of sowing the seeds of dissension in any church." However, he used sometimes to go to hear the Adventists'
ministers.
It was Elder Witham's turn to preach that Sunday. He was a tall, spare man, and he preached in a long linen "duster." For one I became quite a good deal interested in the sermon, for the preacher began very pleasantly by telling us several short anecdotes. Toward the close of his discourse, he became very earnest and raised his voice quite near the shouting pitch.
During intermission, there was an attempt made to organize a Sunday school. The boys and girls were seated in classes in the pews, and teachers were appointed from the older members of the church.
There was a small Sunday-school library, consisting of quaint little books with marbled covers. Each of us was permitted to carry home one of these small volumes; and I recollect that my book that Sabbath was entitled _Herman's Repentance_.
The Elder rode home with our folks to tea, and Theodora walked with us boys. There were six or eight others walking with us, the sons and daughters of neighbors, to whom Theodora kindly introduced me: Georgie and Elsie Wilbur, very pretty girls of about Ellen's age, also their brother Edgar, near my own age, and a large, awkward but smiling youngster, whose name was Henry Sylvester, whom the others called "Bub."
An older boy of rather swaggering manners overtook us on our way, and began talking patronizingly to me, without an introduction. His name was Alfred Batchelder. We also overtook a boy named Willis Murch, who had stopped to sit, waiting for us, on a large rock beside the road. The Murch family lived a mile beyond the Old Squire's to the northwest.
The quiet of the walk homeward was somewhat broken in upon, however, by a scuffle and some hard words betwixt Halstead and Alfred Batchelder.
As we came near the great gate opening into our lane, Theodora walked up to the house with me, a little behind the others, and told me, confidentially--for my good, I suppose--that Alfred Batchelder was deemed a reckless chap whose character was not above reproach. I, on my part, seized the opportunity to proffer Halstead's petition for the loan of twenty-five cents.
"I could lend it to him," she replied, "and so can Ellen, I think."
But she seemed thoughtful, and by and by asked me to tell her all that Halstead had said. I did so, and added that he did not wish Addison to know about it.
"I am sorry for that," she said, "for I should like to ask Ad's advice.
But I suppose we had better not tell him, if Halse is unwilling."
Later that evening she gave me the money, along with twenty-five cents from Ellen. I handed it to Halstead that night, a dollar and a quarter in all. He appeared much pleased.
"Does Ad know it, or the old gent?" he asked me, and cried, "Good!" when I said they did not.
He sat on the side of the bed and tossed up the five quarter pieces, catching them as they fell.
"I know a way to get plenty of these fellers," he remarked to me at length.
"What makes you borrow of the girls, then?" I asked.
"O, you needn't be scared. I'll soon pay you all," he retorted.
But I had begun to doubt that the money was to pay for a poor farmer's seed-corn.
CHAPTER VIII
"OLD THREE-LEGS"
Monday morning dawned bright and very warm. As we were about to sit down to breakfast, Catherine Edwards called at the door and left a letter for me, from my mother, which had arrived at the Corners post-office on Saturday, but which Neighbor Edwards, who had brought the mail for us late that evening, had overlooked; my letter had consequently lain over, in his coat pocket, until that morning, when he had chanced to discover it.
My mother had written me a very nice letter, as such letters go, exhorting me to good behavior in general; and if she had stopped short at that point, it would have been better. She went on, however, to tell me of affairs at home, of what she was doing, of "Bush," our cat, of the canary, of three or four boys and girls with whom I was acquainted, and also of a grand parade of returned soldiers.
I had not half finished it, when I was seized with such a pang of homesickness as I hope never to feel again; in fact, I do not believe that I ever could feel another such pang. It penetrated my entire being; I could not swallow a mouthful of breakfast. It seemed to me that I should choke and die right there, if I did not get up and start for home that very minute;--and I knew I could not go. Blue is no adequate word with which to describe such sensations. In the course of an hour, however, this first fit passed off for the most part, but left me very pensive and melancholy. I was aware, too, that the Old Squire had noticed my mood.
As we hoed corn that forenoon, a boy came driving a horse and "drag"
into the field; it was Edgar Wilbur, one of the lads whom I had seen the day before while coming from church. The Wilburs lived at the farm next beyond the Edwardses, about three-quarters of a mile distant from us.
Mr. Wilbur was not a wholly thrifty farmer, and often borrowed tools at the Old Squire's. Edgar had now come for the "cultivator," for their corn.
While we were loading it on the drag for him, Edgar told us boys that he had to go to the back pasture to salt their sheep that afternoon, and asked us to go with him. Addison replied that we were too busy with our hoeing; but the Old Squire, who had overheard what was said, looked at me with a compassionate smile, and said that I might go if I liked. I suppose he hoped that the trip with Edgar would cheer me up.
Accordingly, after dinner, I was given my liberty, and set off for the Wilburs, leaving Halstead grumbling over what he deemed my unmerited good fortune.