A BELATED LETTER
The hay was all baled by the next morning, and the balers, atop the
lumbering machine, caroled loudly if not musically as the fat horses
dragged them slowly up the lane. Neat bales of hay were piled high on
the barn floor, to be carted over to Hagar's Corners and loaded on a
freight car. That would be Ethan's job, and he grumbled at the
prospect of doing it without Bob's help.
Betty, coming in from the garden, stumbled over something in the
narrow entry. It was a man's coat--Mr. Peabody's, she recognized when
she picked it up and shook it slightly to free it from dust. A letter
fell from the pocket as she replaced it on the hook where it usually
hung, and, stopping to pick it up, she saw to her surprise that it
was addressed to her.
"From Washington!" she said aloud, deciphering the postmark. "And
mailed five days ago! He's carried it in his pocket ever since it
came!"
At first she feared it had been read, but evidently Mr. Peabody had
not troubled to open it; so hastily tearing the envelope, she read
the brief note. A check was enclosed for her, and Mr. Gordon
suggested that she go to Pineville and visit old friends there for a
week or two until his plans were definitely shaped.
"I know the Arnolds are in California," he wrote; "but the
Bensingers will be glad to have you, or any of your mother's old
friends. You do not have to stay one minute where you are unhappy."
Betty looked up as a shadow fell across the sunny floor. It was Mr.
Peabody, and he had the grace to show confusion when he saw the
letter in her hand.
Betty sprang to her feet.
"Why did you keep my letter?" she demanded hotly. "How did you dare
to hold back mail? This must have been in your coat pocket three or
four days. It was mailed five days ago!"
"Been rummaging in my coat pocket, have you?" sneered the farmer.
"I have not! The coat was on the floor, and I fell over it. The
letter fell out while I was trying to hang it up. No one has a right
to hold back another person's mail!"
"Now hold your horses," advised Peabody pacifically. "Who's been
holding back mail? If a body takes the mail out of the box and
carries it around in his coat a day or two, because he doesn't
remember it, that ain't such a crime that I ever knew. I just forgot
there was a letter for you."
Betty turned away in disgust and went out to her favorite apple tree
to think things over. She did not believe for one moment that Mr.
Peabody had forgotten her letter. Indeed, absent-mindedness was far
from being one of his traits. However, there was absolutely nothing
to be gained by arguing, and the way was now clear for her to leave
Bramble Farm. Surely the worst of her troubles were over.
"I might go to Pineville," she thought meditatively. "I'd love to
see the Bensingers again and the dear little house where we lived.
I'll pack this afternoon."
Betty was an orderly little person, and at her work that afternoon
she stopped frequently to sew on a button here, to mend a rip in this
garment or to whip a frayed edge that might mar an otherwise dainty
belonging. Singing softly over her task, a timid knock at her door
wakened the girl from a happy reverie.
"Come in, Mrs. Peabody," she called cheerfully. "Do sit down and
give me advice about where things should go. I thought I hadn't
bought anything this summer, but I seem to have a great deal more
stuff than I brought with me."
"You're packing then?" asked Mrs. Peabody, taking a chair near the
bed and regarding Betty oddly. "Are you really going, Betty?"
"Oh, yes," Betty answered matter-of-factly, "Uncle Dick wants me to
stop in Pineville and visit old friends for a bit. And there's no use
in pretending, Mrs. Peabody, that--that--"
"No, I suppose not," sighed the woman, understanding only too well.
"Land knows, if I could get away I'd have no misgivings about the
right of it. I'll miss you, though. You've been a sight of company
this summer, and no one could have been sweeter to me, Betty."
"Agatha!" came a stentorian shout from the front hall. "Are you
going to stay up there all day?"
"My stars, I forgot what I came up for!" Mrs. Peabody rose
hurriedly. "Joseph sent me up to tell you he wanted to ask you
something, Betty. And here I sit right down and him waiting there all
this time!"
Betty was far from concerned over Mr. Peabody's wasted time, but she
wondered uneasily what he could wish to ask her. Something connected
with Bob, doubtless. She followed Mrs. Peabody downstairs and found
the master of Bramble Farm striding up and down impatiently.
"Never saw the beat of women," he muttered. "Gabble, gabble, and an
hour right out of a day's work means nothing to 'em. Oh, here you
are, Miss. You know that gray alpaca coat of mine you took the letter
from this morning?"
"The coat the letter fell out of?" corrected Betty, knowing that
such quibbling was foolish On her part and might provoke serious
irritation in her questioner, yet unable to refrain. "Of course I
remember it; what about it?"
Peabody accepted her description of the coat. He was plainly excited
and nervous, and betrayed a curious disposition to conciliate Betty,
instantly detected in his change of tone.
"Did you pick up any other papers?" he asked quite politely. "Any
folded sheets, I mean, or a long envelope? I thought you might have
put them back of the clock or somewhere for safe keeping and
forgotten to mention them to me."
Betty looked her astonishment. Automatically her eyes traveled to
the clock which was pulled out of its place against the wall. So the
man had actually looked there, believing that out of chagrin she
might have concealed his papers from him!
"Nothing fell out of your pocket except my letter," she said
earnestly and with a quietness that carried conviction. "I saw
absolutely nothing else on the floor. If I had picked up other
papers, I should have returned them to you, of course."
Mrs. Peabody cleared her throat, usually a sign of coming speech on
the rare occasions when she did open her mouth in her husband's
presence.
"What you lost, Joseph?" she asked eagerly. "Something missing out
o' your pocket?"
"Yes, something out of my pocket!" said her husband savagely. "You
wouldn't know if I told you, but it's an unrecorded deed and worth a
good deal of money. And I'll bet I know who took it--that measly
runaway, Bob Henderson! By gum, he carried the coat up to the house
for me from the barn the day before he lit out. That's where it's
gone. I see his game! He'll try to get money out of me. But I won't
pay him a cent. No sir, I'll go to Washington first and choke the
deed out of his dirty pocket."
"Did Bob go to Washington?" quavered Mrs. Peabody, her mind seizing
on this concrete fact, the one statement she could understand in her
husband's monologue. "How'd you find out, Joseph?"
"Not through Betty," returned Peabody grimly. "She's willing to take
the scoundrel's part against honest folks any time. Jim Turner told
me. Leastways he told me of some old duffer who runs a crazy shop
down there, and he thinks Bob's gone looking him up to find out about
his parents. Just let him try blackmailing me, and he'll learn a
thing or two."
Betty had kept still as long as she could.
"Bob is no thief!" she said bravely. "You ought to be ashamed to
say such a thing about him. I know he didn't take your old deed. What
earthly use would it be to him? Besides, Bob would never touch a
thing that wasn't his!"
"I don't believe he would take anything, Joseph," urged Mrs. Peabody
with perfectly amazing temerity. As a rule she took neither side in a
controversy. "Besides, as the child says, what good would an
unrecorded deed do him? Unless--Joseph, have you bought the Warren
lots?"
"You tend to your housework, and I'll manage my own affairs,"
snapped Peabody, turning a dull brick red, however. "I meant to put
the thing in the safety deposit box over to the bank, and then that
sick cow took my mind completely off it. If Betty didn't take it, Bob
did. It's gone, and they're the only two that could have put hands on
it."
"I tell you that I haven't seen the deed," said Betty firmly. "And I
am equally certain that Bob never took it. He's the soul of honor,
whatever you may think, and he would no more take what wasn't his
than he would lie to you about it."
Peabody caught hold of her right hand suddenly.
"What you carrying?" he demanded suspiciously. "A trunk key? Looks
mighty funny, doesn't it, to be packing up with something pretty
valuable missing? The law would likely give me the right to search
your trunk."
"What a dreadful old man you are!" cried Betty, involuntarily,
shrinking from the sinister face that grinned malevolently into hers.
"You have no right to touch my trunk."
"Well, no call to look like that," muttered Peabody, turning toward
the door. "I knew that other young one took it, and I aim to make it
hot for him."
"Bob didn't take any deed!" stormed Betty to Mrs. Peabody, her
packing forgotten for the moment. "Why does he keep insisting Bob
stole it? And why, oh, why did that poorhouse man have to tell where
Bob had gone?"
Mrs. Peabody's natural curiosity had to be satisfied, and as it was
no longer a secret Betty told her of Lockwood Hale and Bob's
determination to find out more about himself.
"He doesn't want any deed," she finished scornfully. "Can't you make
Mr. Peabody see how foolish such an accusation is?"
Mrs. Peabody leaned against the kitchen table wearily.
"I know what he's thinking," she said dully. "I know more than I
want to know, Betty. Joseph has bought the Warren lots, and that
means he's got 'em for his own price. Old man Warren is in his dotage
and these lots have been surveyed and cut up into building plots on
the stone road over t'other side of Laurel Grove where the trolley's
coming through this spring. Joseph will probably sell 'em for three
times what he's paid for 'em. That's why he doesn't have the deed
recorded; Warren's children will get hold of it, and I doubt if the
sale would hold in court. Everybody knows the old father isn't
competent to handle his property. There was talk of having one of the
sons made his guardian some months ago. Joseph has just talked him
into selling. If he wasn't my husband, I should say the sale was a
plain swindle."