“It has been very hard to say ‘forgive us our trespasses,’ when I think of Colcord, but I try to, and I’m glad you did not tell. Sam, there isn’t one boy in a hundred would have done what you’ve done. No, nor in a thousand neither!”
Sam’s hot tears fell faster and faster on these words. He felt rewarded for all he had suffered, and all that was before him. He was not ashamed to lay his head down on the table and “cry it out.”
“Well, now, if you’re through, suppose we have some breakfast,” Hadley said, as he came back with the waiter, bearing a tray covered with good things. “I haven’t had any letters from home, and I’m hungry. Yes—two oyster stews, boy—any thing that’s good—hurry up there.”
It was such a meal as Sam had not seen for many a day, and served on a table with some pretensions to comfort and elegance. At first he tried to eat to please his generous friend, and because he felt that he needed food; but by the time the savory oyster stew arrived, he was doing almost as well as his companion, in the way of clearing the other dishes.
“I was just thinking it’s a great pity you’re not a girl,” Hadley leisurely remarked, in the interval of breaking a cracker into his plate, and giving a little stir with his spoon.
Sam looked up, wondering why his sex was a matter of regret; it never had been to him. Who ever did see a boy that was not proud of being one, and had not in the bottom of his heart a great feeling of superiority towards all “girls?”
“Why, you see, I’m looking up a cook, that’s my errand down here. You did not know I had turned ranchero, country gentleman, with a villa under the elegant title of Hadley’s Ranch.—Well, I have, and find it rather too much to see to ploughing and sowing, making fences, taking care of the chickens, stable boy and cook into the bargain. Women folks are scarce up in our valley, and unless I sacrifice myself and marry one of those Pike County whole-team individuals, I don’t see what’s going to become of me.”
“I did not know you were a farmer, sir,” Sam said, while his mother’s counsel of working at whatever offered itself, came into his mind.
“Nor I either—till I tried it, just by way of a change when I came down from the mines. What do you suppose my sisters would say to such a fist as that? I used to wear Stewart’s ladies’ gloves to their parties before I came away, and think it was hard work to wait on them to the opera. I don’t suppose they would own any part of me but my moustache now.”
Hadley’s dress was certainly suggestive of any thing sooner than a New-York dandy, and so were his face and figure, hardy and sunburnt; but his manners had the courtesy and self-possession of a gentleman, as well as the free and easy style of the new country. It was quite true before he came to California he had managed to spend a large property, left to him by his father, and his sisters were among the most fashionable women in New-York. His riches had taken the wings of extravagance and self-indulgence, to flee away; but as he often said, it was the best thing they ever did for him.