“The old curmudgeon!” muttered Leslie. “How he does hate all boys! No wonder his own son ran away from home years ago. Say, that big house must have seemed like a cold storage plant to that boy, for there couldn’t have been anything like warmth and happiness inside of it, with Old Jed Nocker present. I’m glad he isn’t any relation to me, that’s all I can say.”
“Listen, Leslie,” Dick continued, lowering his voice still more. “You’ll think it queer, I know, but all the same it’s about that same boy, Amos Nocker, that I’m going to say something right now.”
“But look here, Dick, didn’t we hear some time ago that Amos had married, and later on died far away out West somewhere?”
“It was true too, Leslie. He married a sweet little girl, and for a time managed to support her in comfort, because Amos had turned over a new leaf, you see. Then he came down with tuberculosis, and trouble stepped in.”
“Whew! that was rough,” said the other, his boyish heart touched with genuine sympathy. “And just after Amos was getting a fair start, too. But why didn’t he write to his rich father and get help?”
“He did, but his letter was returned unopened,” Dick explained. “In the end poor Amos Nocker died, just as we heard.”
“Leaving a widow and a child.”
“Just what it was, Leslie—the sweetest little woman you ever knew, and the boy is a darling if ever there was one. You see she wrote to the old man telling him about Amos’ sad death, and that she and the boy were almost penniless.”
“Did that touch the heart of Jed Nocker?”
“He answered her letter, and what do you think he said?” continued Dick, between his set teeth. “That as for her, he vowed never to set eyes on the face of the woman who had married his boy, thinking to come into some of his father’s hard-earned money; but that if she chose to send the child on to him he would care for it. But she must never darken his doors with her presence.”