Less than kin

by Alice Duer Miller

If he had felt the bond in New York he felt it twenty times more when they had moved to Hilltop.

They arrived at Hilltop about five in the afternoon, and tired as he was, Mr. Lee insisted on walking out a little way over the farm to show it to his son. “It will all be yours, Bob, before long. To be sure, it does not pay as it used to, but it’s a fine property.”

Vickers cordially agreed; and even after Mr. Lee had gone back he continued his inspection. Vickers had been trained to farming. He had not been half an hour on the place before he realized that there was there a magnificent property badly if not actually dishonestly mismanaged. Mr. Lee was not a farmer, and had left his land entirely in the hands of his head-man. Vickers saw an opportunity for efficient work before him. This prospect held him, too. He came in very late for dinner, silent as a dog following a scent, quiet as a cat about to spring; abstracted, in short, as a practical man just before action.

It was with just this dogged energy that he had made, as it were actually with his two hands, his cavalry squad in South America. There the problem had been only a practical one. Here a certain amount of information had first to be acquired. He wanted the farm accounts, and he got them, that first evening soon after dinner. He forgot everything else—forgot even that Nellie was sitting outside all by herself in a walled garden, lit by an April moon.

For two nights he sat up until sunrise, poring over the books. He had no other time to give to them, for his hours at the office were long. The second evening, hearing footsteps under the window, he looked out and saw Nellie pacing up and down, closely wrapped about in a thin light shawl, for the night was chilly. He wavered for a moment, and then went back to work. After all, this was something definite that could be done for her. The next evening he would take a holiday.

It was particularly annoying, therefore, when the next evening came, to find that it brought Emmons with it—and Emmons not a merely transient visitor, but a near neighbor very comfortably established not a mile away.

The three sat a little while together in the moonlight while Vickers wondered whether, if he showed no intention of leaving them alone, Emmons would grow discouraged and go home. The answer to his question came at once, for Emmons rose and said firmly that he had one or two things he would like to discuss with Nellie: would she come into the house? Nellie acceded without the least reluctance, and Vickers was left alone.

He took one or two impatient turns up and down the path. This, he said to himself, was just a little more than he proposed to stand. If he were willing, for Nellie’s sake, to clerk in the daytime, and farm at twilight, and figure at night, he would not in between times play third to her and her fiancé.

Then suddenly the recollection came to him of a girl he had met at Mrs. Raikes’s—a young and pretty creature, with the soft yet assured manner of the American girl who has been educated in a French convent. Surely that girl had told him she spent her summers at Hilltop. There had been some talk of his coming to see her. If only he could remember her name.

A supreme effort of memory brought it to him—Overton. That was it. She had seemed a nice little thing. He would go and see Miss Overton.