Hiram in the Middle West

by Burbank L. Todd

CHAPTER XXXII

LOOKING AHEAD

Later the reticent Ted opened his heart to his friend and told him of all his checkered life previous to his coming to Sunnyside Farm.

It was by no means a strange story; except that he was forced to live in a public institution, the management of which chanced to be in rather hard, unsympathetic hands.

Theodore could remember a little of what had happened to him before he was incarcerated in that first institution with its stone walls and strict discipline, and a government scarcely paternal.

He could remember that he had had a little sister, too, whom he loved very much and whom he looked after and carried about in his arms. But they had taken her from him in the orphanage and he had become "Ted C." He never was allowed to see his little sister again.

At twelve years old he was taken by a family who treated him well and who sent him to school and taught him for a few short years what the "worth while" things in life were. Then illness and death in the family cost the boy his home, and he had to struggle for himself. He was soon picked up by the police and the magistrate sent him to the reform school, as there was nobody to speak for him.

How Ted had kept a clean heart during these troubled years was a mystery. There was something, Hiram believed, innately good in the fellow. Like Sister, he possessed traits of character that disposed him toward good rather than toward evil.

But his experiences made him reticent and suspicious. After he ran away from the reform school he never wholly trusted people he met. In the city he was always in fear of the police, as well as of his associates in the reform school who likewise had got out. He was afraid they would get him into further trouble. So he went out into the country and worked his way west from farm to farm.

That he really was Theodore Cheltenham was soon established through letters from the Eastern lawyer who had the matter in charge. At Christmas time both he and Hiram were relieved from duty, and they went to Scoville to spend the holidays at the Atterson farm and to settle with the lawyer about the legacy left to Ted and his sister.

Sister's name, by the way, was Mary, but she always called herself "Mary Cecilia."

"Now I've got money and a brother, both," Sister said to Hiram, "I am somebody. I wish Mr. Fred Crackit and Mr. Peebles and all those others at the boarding house in Crawberry knew about it—and that boy who used to pull my pigtails so.

"Dear me, Hiram Strong, what a lucky girl I am."

She would have been glad to keep her brother with her in the East, for she was very fond of him already. But Theodore's thoughts were set on Sunnyside. He had immediately written to Mr. Bronson, making an offer for the farm, having money enough as his share of his grandmother's legacy to make a first payment on the place. And, in time, Sunnyside Farm became Ted Cheltenham's property.

The two young fellows returned to Pringleton after New Year's to take up their work. Hiram's contract with Mr. Bronson had still some months to run, and it was arranged that he should put in the corn crop and continue a personal oversight of the farm until after wheat harvest. For Hiram had a stake in that wheat crop; and while he was making arrangements for his own great venture, the particulars of which will be related in "Hiram in the Great Northwest," he intended to keep a sharp eye on Yancey Battick's famous wheat.

That winter, whenever it was open weather, both Hiram and Battick searched the fields for the pest that had attacked the Staff of Life Wheat during the previous season. Some of the farmers around the Banks place had their grain well-nigh eaten up by the pest, but none appeared again on Sunnyside. There was no danger of Adam Banks spreading the grain louse to other fields, if he had been guilty of it before, for Banks had finally come to the attention of the police and had been put in jail.

"And the right place for him," declared Miss Pringle. "He has made trouble enough about here."

Miss Pringle's own interest in the new wheat was abiding since she had helped in its sale during the summer. And by this time she showed an inordinate interest in everything belonging to Yancey Battick.

The latter had "spruced up," as Hiram called it, a good deal of late. He was no longer playing the hermit. His success with the Staff of Life Wheat made him forget his failure with the Mortgage Lifter Oats, and really made a new man of Yancey Battick.

"And mark my words," Ted Cheltenham said, laughing, when Hiram said this, "that new man is looking for a new woman. I can't go over to Delia's in the evening without finding Yancey Battick occupying her best rocker. I don't know but Abigail will leave Miss Pringle flat. She still believes Battick has the evil eye."

This winter did not pass without Hiram being invited to one of Lettie Bronson's parties. This time the young girl saw to it that Ted was asked too, for she rode up to Sunnyside herself to deliver the invitation to the social function by word of mouth.

Of course they agreed to go. Hiram would not have hurt Lettie's feelings for anything, and she was much in earnest. As for Ted, he seemed to have prepared for this very occasion while he was East.

At least, he displayed a handsome suit of evening clothes and asked Hiram if he was not going to wear his own dress suit. Hiram hauled the suit in question out of his trunk and carefully examined it. In his eyes the clothes looked just the same as they had when he laid them away.

"Here, Jim," he said to Larry. "You and I are about of a size. I make you a free-will offering of these—pants, coat and vest! Somehow, I don't fancy my appearance in the 'soup to nuts.' My figure is not built right for such garments. I am sure no tailor could make Hiram Strong look as though he belonged in a suit of this kind."

Perhaps he was right. At least, nobody considered him out of place when he arrived at the Bronson house and appeared as one of the few men who were not in evening dress.

In another matter Hiram showed wisdom on this occasion. Lettie was just as kind to him as she always had been. He might have had three or four dances with her. He accepted two, and sat them out with her in a corner of the conservatory, although Ted Cheltenham danced with every girl he could find—and danced well.

"You are a funny boy, Hiram Strong," said Lettie, looking at him curiously.

"How so?"

"Why, preferring to sit here rather than to getting out on that beautifully waxed floor," she said.

"I would be 'funnier' there than I look here," he replied grimly. "I know my failings better than I used to, Lettie."

"Why, Hiram!"

"Sure I do. I am only going to tackle in the future what I have a fair chance to accomplish."

"I cannot imagine you as a failure in anything, Hiram," she, told him very prettily.

"No? I can imagine myself failing in lots of things."

"But not in this new venture you are making? Father says you have wonderful pluck to attempt to go out into that strange country and risk your last cent on a wheat ranch."

"I suppose it does look like a gamble," admitted Hiram.

"And father says he would be glad to help you get started here, as Orrin—I mean, Theodore—is starting."

"It is kind of your father, I know," agreed Hiram. "But I guess I am in a hurry. I may be glad to come back and take a job with your father again. But it will only be after I have spent every cent I own on this new venture."

"And you have made good here, Hiram," she said, with some wistfulness in her voice and her look. "Don't you think you would better stay?"

"Couldn't think of it, Lettie. My plans are all made."

"Not—not if all your friends here asked you to?" she ventured.

"Why, I am sure," Hiram laughed, but remembering in secret how Sister had finally wished him Godspeed, "that none of my real friends would want to keep me back from this thing, when I am so set on it and have been so long planning for it."

"Well, perhaps not," she sighed. "Here comes Theodore, looking for me, Hiram. I have promised him the next dance."

She arose, and Hiram watched her float away in the arms of his friend. For a moment he felt a stab of—was it jealousy? Or was it just a feeling of homesickness as he contemplated so soon leaving everybody he knew and cared for, to lose himself in the vast wheat fields of the Great Northwest?

THE END

[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation left as printed.]