It was about this time that Hiram received his first letter since leaving Scoville from Sister. He was glad to hear personally from her, and about her wonderful fortune as well; but it must be confessed that had the letter been from a certain other girl he would have been equally pleased.
He had heard of Lettie Bronson frequently from her father. She would graduate from St. Beris in June and come home to Plympton. Then, Hiram hoped, he would see her occasionally at Sunnyside Farm.
Secretly the young fellow was particularly pleased with his new position as farm manager because it gave him an opportunity to delegate the heavier and dirtier work to his workmen. If Lettie came on the place he would be able to go to meet her in decent clothes and with clean hands.
Sister's letter was very friendly and newsy; but upon reading it a second time Hiram thought he observed in it a tone that was not like that of the Sister he had previously known. She had been wont to be rather fly-away and careless of speech and act. Now there was a sudden primness in the way she expressed herself which must, Hiram thought, arise from the feeling of responsibility which her new circumstances had brought to her.
But here spoke the old tender-hearted, if imaginative, Sister:
"I wish I could go out myself, Hiram, and find my little brother. Just think of his running away—even from a reform school—into the world all stark alone! I don't know anything more about him than that—not even what his first name is. It seems my Grandmother Cheltenham hired the lawyer to find us both before she died, but she would do nothing for Brother and me until we were both found. So all that I can do is to wait patiently. I hope the poor boy will come to no harm."
She signed the letter: "I-don't-know-my-first-name-yet Cheltenham." But Hiram could imagine how proud and happy Sister was with a real name of her own.
"Bless her dear little heart," he murmured.
The carpenters began to arrive at Sunnyside, and the shack, first to be used for a bunkhouse and kitchen, was soon put up. It would comfortably house twenty men, the bunks being built along the walls and a long table and benches occupying the middle of the room. Hiram took his old bed in the small house after Orrin Post moved in with the other men, and the incubator house was fumigated.
"For as long as you are used to farmwork," Hiram had told Orrin, "why should you not stay here and work for me when you get strong enough?"