Part 19 (2/2)

They met one day on the little bridge that crossed the brook near the schoolhouse. Henrietta nodded a bare recognition.

”You didn't treat me that way once, Henrietta. What's the matter? Have I done anything wrong? Can't you be friendly?”

”Why don't _you_ be friendly?” said the girl, looking down.

”I--I?” said Rob.

”You haven't spoken to me since you came home.”

”Well, that isn't my fault; you wouldn't look at me. I'm not going to run after a person that lives in a fine house and that only nods her head at me.”

”I don't live in a fine house, but in that old frame.”

”Well, why don't you be friendly?”

”It isn't a girl's place to be friendly first, is it?”

Rob stared at her.

”But you had other young men come to see you in town, and--you know I couldn't.”

”I don't live in town now.”

”What made you come home?”

”If I'd wanted to I might have stayed there and had 'other young men,'

as you call them, coming to see me yet.”

Rob gasped, but said nothing.

”Are you going over to Mr. Brown's?” asked Henrietta, to break the awkward silence that followed, at the same time moving toward home.

”Well--no,” said Rob; ”I think I'm going to your house, if you've no objection,” and he laughed, a foolish little laugh.

”Periwinkle was asking about you this morning,” said Henrietta evasively as they walked on toward Mr. Newton's.

Having once fallen into the old habit of going to Mr. Newton's, Rob could never get out of the way of walking down that lane. Just to see how Henrietta got on with her drawing, as he said, he went there every evening. He confided to Henrietta that he had shown such proficiency in ”figures” in the night school that he was to have a place in a civil engineer's office when he returned to the city in the fall. It wasn't much of a place; the salary was small, but it gave him an opportunity to study and a chance of being something some day.

And Henrietta went on with her drawing, but without ever saying anything about a return to Cousin John's. And, indeed, she never did go back to Cousin John's from that day to this. She spent three years in Weston. If they were tedious years, she said nothing about them. Rob came home on Christmas and for a week in summer. Once in a long time he would run up the Harlem road on Sat.u.r.day evening. These were white Sundays when Rob was at home, for then he and Henrietta went to meeting together, and sat on the porch in the afternoons while Rob told her how he expected to be somebody some day.

But being somebody is hard work and slow for most of us, as Rob Riley found out. His salary was not increased very fast, but he made up for that by steadily increasing his knowledge and his value in the office.

For Rob had discovered that being somebody means being something. You can't hide any man under a bushel if he has a real light in him.

It was not till last year that Henrietta returned to the city. She is a student now in oil painting. But she does not live at Cousin John's.

Nor, indeed, does she live in a very fas.h.i.+onable street, if I must confess it. There are many old houses in New York that have been abandoned by their owners because of the uptown movement and the west-side movement of fas.h.i.+on. These houses are as quaint in their antique interiors as a bric-a-brac cabinet. In an upper story of one of these subdivided houses Rob Riley and his wife, Henrietta, have two old-fas.h.i.+oned rooms; the front room is large and airy, with a carved mantelpiece, the back room small and cosy. The furniture is rather plain and scant, for Rob has not yet got to be a great engineer working on his own account. At present he is one of those little fish that the big fish are made to eat--an obscure man whose brains are carried up to the credit of his chief. But he is already something, and is sure to be somebody. And, for that matter, the rooms in the old mansion in De Witt Place are quite good enough for two stout-hearted young people who are happy. The walls are well ornamented with pictures from Henrietta's own brush and pencil. These are not framed, but tacked up wherever the light is good. The best of them is a chubby little girl with a droll-serious air, clad in an old-fas.h.i.+oned hood and m.u.f.fled in cloaks and shawls. It is a portrait of Periwinkle as she stood that night on Cousin John's steps when she had come down to see about Henrietta.

Henrietta is just finis.h.i.+ng a picture called The Culprit, which she hopes will be successful. It represents a girl in a country school arraigned for drawing pictures on a slate. Rob, at least, thinks it very fine, but he is not a harsh critic of anything Henrietta makes.

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