IT seemed almost like coming home to Humphrey Meadowcroft to return
to South Paulding at the end of the summer. He didn’t remember
experiencing such a sensation of assurance and well-being and
expectation since his boyhood. But it wasn’t his sister’s house that
was home so much as the village; for the house was practically empty.
Mrs. Phillips was to spend the autumn at the mountains, and besides
himself there were only Herbie and a cook and the gardener about the
place. Meadowcroft had not only returned early, but he had made a
point of arriving three days before the opening of the high school in
Paulding.
He had heard during the summer from all three of his young friends.
Rose Harrow, whom he didn’t particularly take to, and in whom he
would have felt no genuine interest but for Betty, already wrote very
creditable-appearing letters by means of a contrivance Tommy had made
for her from a bread-toaster. But her letters hadn’t been informing;
neither had Betty’s beautifully written, stilted, formal epistles.
And Tommy’s smudgy scrawls, though characteristic and amusing, had
been chiefly concerned with magic. Wherefore he was eager to learn how
matters had progressed and what the present situation might be with
regard to them.
Before he had gone away, Meadowcroft had walked to Mrs. Harrow’s and
back, though under cover of darkness. On the day after his return,
he created, unawares, a sensation in the village by walking to the
post office for the noon-day mail. He did this partly to confirm a
resolve he had made, partly to advertise his arrival. And what he had
expected to prove an ordeal was quite the reverse. Instead of staring
or betraying secret curiosity, the few people he met greeted him with a
friendliness that seemed to adopt him among their number. And it seemed
very good to be adopted, to be walking the village street, a man among
his fellow-men. Thereafter he walked the length of the avenue twice
daily when the weather admitted.
Tommy Finnemore’s father brought the news home at noon, and the moment
Tommy had swallowed his dinner he hurried down to the Phillips house to
greet his friend. He found him just sitting down to luncheon. The boy’s
unfeigned delight at seeing him warmed the man’s heart. Meadowcroft
made him sit down at table with him, and Tommy, quite unabashed at what
was really magnificence to him, consumed three helpings of pudding
while he related the full course of his experiments in magic, beginning
with the day after Meadowcroft’s departure, going on to a day in July
when he had inadvertently destroyed a silver table fork, and continuing
after a break of three weeks. Mr. Meadowcroft showed his genuine
interest, and Herbie was evidently deeply impressed by what bits he
caught. The latter pressed the pudding upon Tommy and brought forth
some marshmallows, apparently feeling that he was serving a celebrated
magician.
After luncheon they went out to the garden--not the little walled
enclosure, but into the heart of the great handsome garden whose plots
and parterres had been trained and tended for a quarter of a century.
Tommy frankly admired Mr. Meadowcroft’s handling of his crutches and,
after they were seated, asked if he might try them. For some moments he
hopped about with manifest enjoyment.
“It ain’t so bad,” he remarked, as he dropped down upon the other end
of the bench with Mr. Meadowcroft. “I suppose you played they were
stilts when you were a boy?”
“No, Tommy. I didn’t. I wish I had,” returned Meadowcroft with a sigh.
“I am sorry to say I hardly knew there were such things as stilts.”
“Well, I suppose even now you could pretend they were,” Tommy remarked.
“I can pretend things now as well as ever. But it may be my magic,
of course. There’s something about magic that keeps a fellow young.
Perhaps it’s because you have to have so much faith.” And he sighed.
Meadowcroft laughed.
“How about Betty?” he asked. “You said she was well, but you didn’t
seem inclined to go into particulars. I hope--all is well with her?”
“The truth is, poor Bet’s in a heap of trouble,” said the boy soberly,
“I just thought I’d better lie low and not say much while you were
eating dinner. Our physiology says never to tell bad news at the table.
It dries up the juices and retards digestion. Not that anybody at home
ever thinks of it. Dad had just as leave shout any old thing at me when
I’m eating--he’d druther than not.”
“But Betty? What has happened to her?” Meadowcroft asked anxiously.
“Well, nothing has happened, really. It’s something that hasn’t
happened that ails her,” the boy returned judicially. “And it isn’t
quite so bad as you seem to think by your expression. She isn’t sick or
gone blind or had her teeth knocked out. It’s more like--well, a broken
heart, you might say.”
“Tommy Finnemore! What nonsense is this you are giving me? Tell me at
once what you are trying to get at--or to conceal!” demanded the other.
Tommy, despite his genuine interest and concern in the matter, was
secretly gratified to have produced such an impression upon his friend.
He felt that it augured well for the way he would handle his audience
when he should have become a celebrated magician.
“More _like_ a broken heart, I said, not really _it_,” he rejoined
soberly. “Anyhow, she has been training all summer on the sly, Betty
has, getting used to walking fast and long ways, planning to walk to
Paulding to school every day and back home at night and just lotting on
it and wild to begin. But she never dassed ask her father till three
days ago, and he was fierce--said he’d sooner keep her home than let
her do such a crazy thing.”
Meadowcroft’s brow clouded. It seemed more than a pity.
Tommy leaned towards him. His voice fell very low.
“She cried all that night--or most all, and when her father saw her
eyes all swelled up in the morning he was fierce’n ever. And she must
’a looked queer, because it was bad enough when I saw her after dinner.
She had agreed to come over to see my new trick of making a banana
peel itself in a bottle and she came right along where another girl
would have been mortified to show she’d been crying and would have
broken her word. Don’t tell I told you.”
“No, indeed, Tommy,” the other assured him. For some moments he gazed
frowningly into the distance. Then he turned to the boy.
“By the way, Tommy, what sort of a man is Mr. Pogany?” he inquired. “I
never spoke to him.”
“Some say he’s as hard as the ten-penny nails he sells, but I don’t
myself go that far with ’em,” Tommy remarked in his judicial manner.
“I like him pretty well. He’s about as good as the average and a lot
easier to get along with than my dad. And in many ways he’s good to
Betty, and when he ain’t, it’s more than likely because her Aunt
Sarah sics him on to be fierce. Now Bet wanted one of those swell
sailor-suits to wear to high school--Peter Thompkinses, they call
’em--and she coaxed him, and he up and got her one. Don’t tell, but she
had to get a twenty-year-old size. She looks mighty decent in it just
the same.”
“I don’t doubt it. But, Tommy, has she tried coaxing him up, as you put
it, in regard to walking to school?”
“She don’t dass. She knows him pretty well, you see. And when he once
gets his mad up, it’s no cinch, believe me. And more often than not, he
does just as Aunt Sarah says about Betty, and she’s such a spiteful old
cat. Just think, she hasn’t forgiven Betty yet because she left off--”
he moved nearer and whispered the word “corsets” in Meadowcroft’s ear.
As for Humphrey Meadowcroft, he felt himself strangely disturbed. It
appeared that he had set his heart upon the project as warmly as had
the girl hers, so that his sensation, also, might be expressed by
Tommy’s “more like a broken heart.” Furthermore, he had expected much
in the way of results that Betty would not have thought of. As he had
told her, the walking would undoubtedly have limbered her up mentally
as well as physically and made her more pliant and supple in every way.
But he had secretly believed it would do more. He had felt that the
regular exercise would gradually reduce her weight so that within a
year she would become merely a large, well-grown girl instead of a baby
giant.
Long after Tommy had gone, Meadowcroft sat pondering upon the
difficulty. He felt that the plan should not be given over without
a struggle, and yet he didn’t know what he could do. It had been
different in the case of Rose Harrow’s mother. There was no question
in regard to the advisability of the blind girl’s going to school and
getting an education; and his own handicap had given him a pretext
for speaking to Mrs. Harrow about it. But this was another matter. If
a father believed his daughter ought not to walk five miles a day,
what right had he to go to him to ask him to reverse his decision? Mr.
Pogany wouldn’t presume to come here to advise him. How should he,
then, take it upon himself to criticize his care of his daughter?