I flashed an angry glance at the old man, but I saw a lurking smile—for the first time in my experience—on the face of stolid Jack Barnstaple, who had lingered behind the others. My face went red, as red as my red hair, and I stooped down to caress the dog. What did the man mean? what had Deb meant that morning in the kitchen? But I raised my head defiantly.
"Well, I think you had just best all of you wait and see," said I, severely. "You'll feel great fools when you find you have made a mistake."
I was alluding to the water scheme; but it struck me afterwards that the men might have misunderstood me. But it was too late to correct the mistake, and without another word I ran down the hill to the path that led to "The Elms."
My cheeks were hot with the consciousness that I had a secret that could be guessed even by Reuben Ruck; the consciousness made my heart beat again very fast; but it need not have done so: as was to have been expected, Mr. Harrod was not at home.
Dorcas and I put up the curtains together, and then I was left alone in the little parlor while she went to make me a cup of tea. It was the first time I had been alone in that room—his room.
A bare, comfortless, countryman's and bachelor's room, but more interesting to me than the daintiest lady's parlor. By the empty hearth the high-backed wooden chair in which he sat; beside the wide old-fashioned grate the hob upon which sang the kettle for his lonely breakfast; in the centre of the rough brick floor the large square oaken table at which he ate; on the high chimney-piece the pipes that he smoked, the tobacco-jar from which he filled them, a revolver, and an almanac; on the walls two water-color drawings, one representing an old gentleman in an arm-chair, the other the outside of a country house overgrown with wistaria; standing in the corner a handsome fowling-piece, which I had seen him carry; in the bookshelf between the windows the books that he read.
I wandered up and looked at them: a curious assemblage of shabby volumes, although at that time they embodied to me all that was highest in culture. That was ten years ago, and I was in love. Had it not been so I might have remembered that father's library was at least as good.
Milton, a twelve-volumed edition of Shakespeare, a Bible, a Pilgrim's Progress, a volume of Cowper's Poems, a volume of Percy's Reliques, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Sir Walter Scott's Novels, Byron, Burns, some odd volumes of Dickens, and then books on Agriculture, the authors and their titles strange to me; this is all I remember. A mixed collection—probably the result of several generations, but not a bad one if Trayton Harrod read it all and read it well.
I looked at it sadly. Save the Walter Scott Novels, the Burns Poems, the Bible, and the Pilgrim's Progress, I knew none of them excepting by name, and not all of them even then. I felt very ignorant and very much ashamed of myself; for I never doubted that Harrod read and knew all these books, and how could a man who knew so much have anything in common with a girl who knew so little? I resolved to read, to learn, to grow clever. Joyce had said that I was clever, Joyce might know; why not?