The rather strained relations between Jud and David were eased the next day by the excitement attending the big package Barnabas brought from town. It was addressed to David, but the removal of the outer wrapping disclosed a number of parcels neatly labeled, also a note from Joe, asking him to distribute the presents.

David first selected the parcel marked “Janey” and handed it to her.

“Blue beads!” she cried ecstatically.

“Let me see, Janey,” said M’ri. “Why, they’re real turquoises and with a gold clasp! I’ll get you a string of blue beads for now, and you can put these away till you’re grown up.”

“I didn’t tell Joe what to get for you, Aunt M’ri; honest, I didn’t,” disclaimed David, with a laugh, as he handed the freezer to her.

“We’ll initiate it this very day, David.”

David handed Barnabas his pipe and gave Jud a letter which he opened wonderingly, uttering a cry of pleasure when he realized the contents.

“It’s an order on Harkness to let me pick out any rifle in his store. How did he know? Did you tell him, Dave?”

“Yes,” was the quiet reply.

“Thank you, Dave. I’ll ride right down and get it, and we’ll go to the woods this afternoon and shoot at a mark.”

“All right,” agreed David heartily.

The atmosphere was now quite cleared by the proposed expenditure of ammunition, and M’ri experienced the sensation as of one beholding a rainbow.

David then turned his undivided attention to his own big package, which contained twelve books, his name on the fly-leaf of each. Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, Andersen’s Fairy Tales, Arabian Nights, Life of Lincoln, Black Beauty, Oliver Twist, A Thousand Leagues under the Sea, The Pathfinder, Gulliver’s Travels, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Young Ranchers comprised the selection. His eyes gleamed over the enticing titles.

“You shall have some book shelves for your room, David,” promised M’ri, “and you can start your library. Joe has made a good foundation for one.”

His eyes longed to read at once, but there were still the two packages, marked “Uncle Larimy” and “Miss Rhody,” to deliver.

“I can see that Uncle Larimy has a fishing rod, but what do you suppose he has sent Rhody?” wondered M’ri.

“A black silk dress. I told him she wanted one.”

“Take it right over there, David. She has waited almost a lifetime for it.”

“Let me take Uncle Larimy’s present,” suggested Jud, “and then I’ll ask him to go shooting with us this afternoon.”

David amicably agreed, and went across fields to Miss Rhody’s.

“Land sakes!” she exclaimed, looking at the parcel. “M’ri ain’t a-goin’ to hev another dress so soon, is she?”

“No, Miss Rhody. Some one else is, though.”

“Who is it, David?” she asked curiously.

“You see Joe Forbes sent some presents from Chicago, and this is what he sent you.”

“A calico,” was her divination, as she opened the package.

“David Dunne!” she cried in shrill, piping tones, a spot of red on each cheek. “Just look here!” and she stroked lovingly the lustrous fold of shining silk.

“And if here ain’t linings, and thread, and sewing silk, and hooks and eyes! Why, David Dunne, it can’t be true! How did he know–David, you blessed boy, you must have told him!”

Impulsively she threw her arms about him and hugged him until he ruefully admitted to himself that she had Jud “beat on the clutch.”

“And say, David, I’m a-goin’ to wear this dress. I know folks as lets their silks wear out a-hangin’ up in closets. Don’t get half as many cracks when it hangs on yourself. I b’lieve as them Episcopals do in lettin’ yer light shine, and I never wuz one of them as b’lieved in savin’ yer best to be laid out in. Oh, Lord, David, I kin jest hear myself a-rustlin’ round in it!”

“Maybe you’ll get a husband now,” suggested David gravely.

“Mebby. I’d orter ketch somethin’ with this. I never see sech silk. It’s much handsomer than the one Homer Bisbee’s bride hed when she come here from the city. It’s orful the way she wastes. Would you b’lieve it, David, the fust batch of pies she made, she never pricked, and they all puffed up and bust. David, look here! What’s in this envylope? Forever and way back, ef it hain’t a five-doller bill and a letter. I hain’t got my glasses handy. Read it.”

“Dear Miss Rhody,” read the boy in his musical voice, “silk is none too good for you, and I want you to wear this and wear it out. If you don’t, I’ll never send you another. I thought you might want some more trimmings, so I send you a five for same. Sincerely yours, Joe.”

“I don’t need no trimmin’s, excep’ fifty cents for roochin’s.”

“I’ll tell you what to do, Miss Rhody. When you get your dress made we’ll go into town and you can get your picture taken in the dress and give it to Joe when he comes back.”

“That’s jest what I’ll do. I never hed my likeness took. David, you’ve got an orful quick mind. Is Joe coming home? I thought he callated to go West.”

“Not until fall. He’s going to spend the summer in his shanty boat on the river.”

“I’ll hurry up and get it made up afore he comes. Tell me what he sent all your folks.”

“Joe’s a generous boy, like his ma’s folks,” she continued, when he had enumerated their gifts. “I am glad fer him that his pa and his stepmother was so scrimpin’. David, would you b’lieve it, in that great big house of the Forbeses thar wa’n’t never a tidy on a chair, and not a picter on the wall! It was mighty lucky for Joe that his stepmother died fust, so he got all the money.”

David hastened home and sought his retreat in the orchard with one of his books. M’ri, curious to know what his selection had been, scanned the titles of the remaining eleven volumes.

“Well, who would have thought of a boy’s preferring fairy tales!”

David read until dinner time, but spent the afternoon with Uncle Larimy and Jud in the woods, where they received good instruction in rifle practice. After supper he settled comfortably down with a book, from which he was recalled by a plaintive little wail.

“I haven’t had a bit of fun to-day, Davey, and it’s Saturday, and you haven’t played with me at all!”

The book closed instantly.

“Come on out doors, Janey,” he invited.

The sound of childish laughter fell pleasantly on M’ri’s ears. She recalled what Joe Forbes had said about her own children, and an unbidden tear lingered on her lashes. This little space between twilight and lamplight was M’ri’s favorite hour. In every season but winter it was spent on the west porch, where she could watch the moon and the stars come out. Maybe, too, it was because from here she had been wont to sit in days gone by and watch for Martin’s coming. The time and place were conducive to backward flights of memory, and M’ri’s pictures of the past were most beguiling, except that last one when Martin Thorne, stern-faced, unrelenting, and vowing that he would never see her again, had left her alone–to do her duty.

When the children came in she joined them. Janey, flushed and breathless from play, was curled up on the couch beside David. He put his arm caressingly about her and began to relate one of Andersen’s fairy tales. M’ri gazed at them tenderly, and was weaving a future little romance for her two young charges when Janey said petulantly: “I don’t like fairy stories, Davey. Tell a real one.”

M’ri noted the disappointment in the boy’s eyes as he began the narrating of a more realistic story.

“David, where did you read that story?” she asked when he had finished.

“I made it up,” he confessed.

“Why, David, I didn’t know you had such a talent. You must be an author when you are a man.”

Late that night she saw a light shining from beneath the young narrator’s door.

“I ought to send him to bed,” she meditated, “but, poor lad, he has had so few pleasures and, after all, childhood is the only time for thorough enjoyment, so why should I put a feather in its path?”

David read until after midnight, and went to bed with a book under his pillow that he might begin his pastime again at dawn.

After breakfast the next morning M’ri commanded the whole family to sit down and write their thanks to Joe. David’s willing pen flew in pace with his thoughts as he told of Miss Rhody’s delight and his own revel in book land. Janey made most wretched work of her composition. She sighed and struggled with thoughts and pencil, which she gnawed at both ends. Finally she confessed that she couldn’t think of anything more to say. M’ri came to inspect her literary effort, which was written in huge characters.

“Dear Joe–”

“Oh,” commented M’ri doubtfully, “I don’t know as you should address him so familiarly.”

“I called him ‘Joe’ when we rode to school. He told me to,” defended Janey.

“He’s just like a boy,” suggested David.

So M’ri, silenced, read on: “I thank you for your beyewtifull present which I cannot have.”

“Oh, Janey,” expostulated M’ri, laughing; “that doesn’t sound very gracious.”

“Well, you said I couldn’t have them till I was grown up.”

“I was wrong,” admitted M’ri. “I didn’t realize it then. We have to see a thing written sometimes to know how it sounds.”

“May I wear them?” asked Janey exultingly. “May I put them on now?”

“Yes,” consented M’ri.

Janey flew upstairs and came back wearing the adored turquoises, which made her eyes most beautifully blue.

“Now I can write,” she affirmed, taking up her pencil with the impetus of an incentive. Under the inspiration of the beads around her neck, she wrote:

“Dear Joe:

“I am wareing the beyewtifull beeds you sent me around my neck. Aunt M’ri says they are terkwoyses. I never had such nice beeds and I thank you. I wish I cood ride with you agen. Good bye. From your frend,

“Janey.”

CHAPTER VI

The next day being town day, David “hooked up” Old Hundred and drove to the house. After the butter crock, egg pails, and kerosene and gasoline cans had been piled in, Barnabas squeezed into the space beside David. M’ri came out with a memorandum of supplies for them to get in town. To David she handed a big bunch of spicy, pink June roses.

“What shall I do with them?” he asked wonderingly.

“Give them to some one who looks as if he needed flowers,” she replied.

“I will,” declared the boy interestedly. “I will watch them all and see how they look at the roses.”

At last M’ri had a kindred spirit in her household. Jud would have sneered, and Janey would not have understood. To Barnabas all flowers looked alike.

It had come to be a custom for Barnabas to take David to town with him at least once a week. The trip was necessarily a slow one, for from almost every farmhouse he received a petition to “do a little errand in town.” As the good nature and accommodating tendency of Barnabas were well known, they were accordingly imposed upon. He received commissions of every character, from the purchase of a corn sheller to the matching of a blue ribbon. He also stopped to pick up a child or two en route to school or to give a lift to a weary pedestrian whom he overtook.

While Barnabas made his usual rounds of the groceries, meatmarket, drug store, mill, feed store, general store, and a hotel where he was well known, David was free to go where he liked. Usually he accompanied Barnabas, but to-day he walked slowly up the principal business street, watching for “one who needed flowers.” Many glances were bestowed upon the roses, some admiring, some careless, and then–his heart almost stopped beating at the significance–Judge Thorne came by. He, too, glanced at the roses. His gaze lingered, and a look came into his eyes that stimulated David’s passion for romance.

“He’s remembering,” he thought joyfully.

He didn’t hesitate even an instant. He stopped in front of the Judge and extended the flowers.

“Would you like these roses, Judge Thorne?” he asked courteously.

Then for the first time the Judge’s attention was diverted from the flowers.

“Your face is familiar, my lad, but–”

“My name is David Dunne.”

“Yes, to be sure, but it must be four years or more since I last saw you. How’s your mother getting along?”

The boy’s face paled.

“She died three weeks ago,” he answered.

“Oh, my lad,” he exclaimed in shocked tones, “I didn’t know! I only returned last night from a long journey. But with whom are you living?”

“With Aunt M’ri and Uncle Barnabas.”

“Oh!”

The impressive silence following this exclamation was broken by the Judge.

“Why do you offer me these flowers, David?”

“Aunt M’ri picked them and told me to give them to some one who looked as if they needed flowers.”

The Judge eyed him with the keen scrutiny of the trained lawyer, but the boy’s face was non-committal.

“Come up into my office with me, David,” commanded the Judge, turning quickly into a near-by stairway. David followed up the stairs and into a suite of well-appointed offices.

A clerk looked up in surprise at the sight of the dignified judge carrying a bouquet of old-fashioned roses and accompanied by a country lad.

“Good morning, Mathews. I am engaged, if any one comes.”

He preceded David into a room on whose outer door was the deterrent word, “Private.”

While the Judge got a pitcher of water to hold the flowers David crossed the room. On a table near the window was a rack of books which he eagerly inspected. To his delight he saw a volume of Andersen’s Fairy Tales. Instantly the book was opened, and he was devouring a story.

“David,” spoke the Judge from the other end of the room, “didn’t these roses grow on a bush by the west porch?”

There was no answer.

The Judge, remarking the boy’s absorption, came to see what he was reading.

“Andersen’s Fairy Tales! My favorite book. I didn’t know that boys liked fairy stories.”

David looked up quickly.

“I didn’t know that lawyers did, either.”

“Well, I do, David. They are my most delightful diversion.”

“Girls don’t like fairy stories,” mused David. “Anyway, Janey doesn’t. I have to tell true stories to please her.”

“Oh, you are a yarner, are you?”

“Yes,” admitted David modestly. “Aunt M’ri thinks I will be a writer when I grow up, but I think I should like to be a lawyer.”

“David,” asked the Judge abruptly, “did Miss Brumble tell you to give me those roses?”

With a wild flashing of eyes the Dunne temper awoke, and the boy’s under jaw shot forward.

“No!” he answered fiercely. “She didn’t know that I know–”

He paused in mid-channel of such deep waters.

“That you know what?” demanded the Judge in his cross-examining tone.

David was doubtful of the consequences of his temerity, but he stood his ground.

“I can’t tell you what, because I promised not to. Some one was just thinking out loud, and I overheard.”

There was silence for a moment.

“David, I remember your father telling me, years ago, that he had a little son with a big imagination which his mother fed by telling stories every night at bedtime.”

“Will you tell me,” asked David earnestly, “about my father? What was it he did? Uncle Barnabas told me something about his trouble last Saturday.”

“How did he come to mention your father to you?”

David reddened.

“Jud twitted me about my mother taking in washing and about my father being a convict, and I knocked him down. I told him I would kill him. Uncle Barnabas pulled me off.”

“And then?”

“Then he let us fight it out.”

“And you licked?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the boy, with proud modesty.

“You naturally would, with that under jaw, but it’s the animal in us that makes us want to kill, and the man in us should rise above the animal. I think I am the person to tell you about your father. He had every reason to make good, but he was unfortunate in his choice of associates and he acquired some of their habits. He had a violent temper, and one night when he was–”

“Drunk,” supplied David gravely.

“He became angry with one of his friends and tried to kill him. Your father was given a comparatively short sentence, which he had almost served when he died. You must guard against your temper and cultivate patience and endurance–qualities your mother possessed.”

It suddenly and overwhelmingly flashed across David what need his mother must have had for such traits, and he turned away to force back his tears. The Judge saw the heaving of the slender, square, young shoulders, and the gray eyes that were wont to look so coldly upon the world and its people grew soft and surprisingly moist.

“It’s past now, David, and can’t be helped, but you are going to aim to be the kind of man your mother would want you to be. You must learn to put up with Jud’s tyranny because his father and his aunt are your benefactors. I have been away the greater part of the time since your father’s death, or I should have kept track of you and your mother. Every time you come to town I want you to come up here and report to me. Will you?”

“Thank you, sir. And I will bring you some more flowers.”

CHAPTER VII

“Whar wuz you, Dave, all the time we wuz in town?” asked Barnabas, as they drove homeward.

“In Judge Thorne’s office.”

“Judge Thorne’s office! What fer?”

“He asked me there, Uncle Barnabas. He was my father’s lawyer once, you know.”

“So he wuz. I hed fergot.”

“He warned me against my temper, as you did, and he told me–all about my father.”

“I am glad he did, Dave. He wuz the one to tell you.”

“He says that every time I come to Lafferton I must come up and report to him.”

“Wal, Dave, it does beat all how folks take to you. Thar wuz Joe wanted you, and now Mart Thorne’s interested. Mebby they could do better by you than we could. Joe’s rich, and the Jedge is well fixed and almighty smart.”

“No,” replied David stoutly. “I’d rather stay with you, Uncle Barnabas. There’s something you’ve got much more of than they have.”

“What’s that, Dave?” asked Barnabas curiously.

“Horse sense.”

Barnabas looked pleased.

“Wal, Dave, I callate to do my best fer you, and thar’s one thing I want you to git some horse sense about right off.”

“All right, Uncle Barnabas. What is it?”

“Feedin’ on them fairy stories all day. They hain’t hullsome diet fer a boy.”

“The Judge reads them,” protested David. “He has that same book of fairy stories that Joe gave me.”

“When you’ve done all the Jedge has, and git to whar you kin afford to be idle, you kin read any stuff you want ter.”

“Can’t I read them at all?” asked David in alarm.

“Of course you kin. I meant, I didn’t want you stickin’ to ’em like a pup to a root. You’re goin’ down to the fields to begin work with me this arternoon, and you won’t feel much like readin’ to-night. I wuz lookin’ over them books of your’n last night. Thar’s one you’d best start in on right away, and give the fairies a rest.”

“Which one?”

“Life of Lincoln. That’ll show you what work will do.”

“I’ll read it aloud to you, Uncle Barnabas.”

When they reached the bridge that spanned the river Old Hundred dropped the little hurrying gait which he assumed in town, and settled down to his normal, comfortable, country jog.

“Uncle Barnabas,” said David thoughtfully, “what is your religion?”

Barnabas meditated.

“Wal, Dave, I don’t know as I hev what you might call religion exackly. I b’lieve in payin’ a hundred cents on the dollar, and a-helpin’ the man that’s down, and–wal, I s’pose I come as nigh bein’ a Unitarian as anything.”

The distribution of the purchases now began. Sometimes the good housewife, herself, came out to receive the parcels and to hear the latest news from town. Oftener, the children of the household were the messengers, for Barnabas’ pockets were always well filled with candy on town days. At one place Barnabas stopped at a barn by the roadside and surreptitiously deposited a suspicious looking package. When he was in front of the next farmhouse a man came out with anxious mien.

“All right, Fred!” hailed Barnabas with a knowing wink. “I was afeerd you’d not be on the watchout. I left it in the manger.”

They did not reach the farm until the dinner hour, and the conversation was maintained by M’ri and Barnabas on marketing matters. David spent the afternoon in being initiated in field work. At supper, M’ri asked him suddenly:

“To whom did you give the flowers, David?”

“I’ve made a story to it, Aunt M’ri, and I’m going to tell it to Janey. Then you can hear.”

M’ri smiled, and questioned him no further.

When the day was done and the “still hour” had come, Janey and David, hand in hand, came around the house and sat down at her feet. It was seldom that any one intruded at this hour, but she knew that David had come to tell his story.

“Begin, Davey,” urged Janey impatiently.

“One day, when a boy was going to town, his aunt gave him a big bouquet of pink roses. She told him to give them to some one who looked as if they needed flowers. So when the boy got to town he walked up Main Street and looked at every one he met. He hoped to see a little sick child or a tired woman who had no flowers of her own; but every one seemed to be in a hurry, and very few stopped to look at flowers or anything else. Those that did look turned away as if they did not see them, and some seemed to be thinking, ‘What beautiful flowers!’ and then forgot them.

“At last he met a tall, stern man dressed in fine clothes. He looked very proud, but as if he were tired of everything. When he saw the flowers he didn’t turn away, but kept his eyes on them as if they made him sad and lonesome in thinking of good times that were over. So the boy asked him if he would not like the flowers. The man looked surprised and asked the boy what his name was. When he heard it, he remembered that he had been attorney for the boy’s father. He took him up into an office marked private, and he gave the boy some good advice, and talked to him about his mother, which made the boy feel bad. But the man comforted him and told him that every time he came to town he was to report to him.”

M’ri had sat motionless during the recital of this story. At its close she did not speak.

“That wasn’t much of a story. Let’s go play,” suggested Janey, relieving the tension.

They were off like a flash. David heard his name faintly called. M’ri’s voice sounded far off, and as if there were tears in it, but he lacked the courage to return.