Part 14 (1/2)
”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.”