“Well,” commented mother, “I don’t blame you for being taken in. Anyone would be.”
“It is a good imitation. The cashier at my bank had to look twice at it before he was sure. And he was on the lookout, too. He said there’d been a lot of them passed in New York and Philadelphia recently.”
“It certainly seems a quick way to get rich,” remarked Mrs. Chester.
“But not a very sure one,” said her husband. “In fact, it’s about the riskiest way there is. Counterfeiters are always caught; Uncle Sam keeps his whole secret service at work until he gets them,” and he proceeded to tell us some stories of exploits which the secret service had performed.
They distracted our thoughts for a while, but it was still far from being a merry evening, and I am sure there were tears in the eyes of all the others, as well as in mine, when our neighbours finally said good-night.
The seventeenth of May dawned clear and warm—a very jewel of a day—and as I sprang from bed and threw back the shutters, I forgot for a moment, in contemplation of the beauty of the morning, that this was the day of our banishment—that this was the last time I should ever sleep in this room and look out upon this landscape. But only for a moment, and then the thought of our approaching exile surged back over me, and I looked out on garden and orchard with a melancholy all the more acute because of their fresh, dewy loveliness.
I met Dick at the foot of the stairs, and together we left the house and made a last tour of the place, saying good-bye to this spot and that which we had learned to love. We looked at the chickens and at the cows; at the old trees in the orchard, at the garden——
We made the tour silently, hand in hand; there was no need that we should speak; but at last I could bear it no longer.
“Dick,” I said, chokingly, “let’s go back to the house; I don’t want to see any more.”