A Busy Year at the Old Squire's

by C. A. Stephens

As the summer passed, Wilma Emmons came to know our affairs at the old farm very well, and of course heard about Jim and his bank book. Jim, in fact, had taken one of his playdays soon after she came; and grandmother asked Wilma to lock the book up in the drawer of her desk at the schoolhouse for a few days.

It was quite like Jim Doane's impulsive nature, already somewhat unbalanced by intoxicants, to be greatly attracted to the reserved Miss Emmons. Out by the garden gate one morning he rather foolishly made his admiration known to her. Addison and I were weeding a strawberry bed just inside the fence and could not avoid overhearing something of what passed.

Astonished and a little indignant, too, perhaps, Miss Emmons told Jim that a young man of his habits had no right to address himself in such a manner to any young woman.

"But I can reform!" Jim said.

"Let folks see that you have done so, then," Miss Emmons replied, and added that a young man who could not be trusted with his own bank book could hardly be depended on to make a home.

It is quite likely that Jim brooded over the rebuff; he was surly for a week afterwards. Then, like the weakling that he had become, he stole away for another playday; and again grandmother, with Theodora's and Miss Emmons's connivance, hid the book, this time somewhere in the wagon-house cellar.

Jim did not come home to demand his book, however; in fact, he did not come back at all. Shame perhaps restrained him. When on the third day the old Squire drove down to the village to get him, he found that Jim had gone to Bangor with two disreputable cronies.

A week or two passed, and then came a somewhat curt letter from Jim, asking grandmother to send his bank book to him at Oldtown, Maine. The letter put grandmother in a great state of mind, and she declared indignantly that she would not send it. In truth, we were all certain that now Jim would squander his savings in the worst possible way; but when another letter came, again demanding the book, the old Squire decided that we must send it.

"The poor fellow needs a guardian," he said. "But he hasn't one; he is his own man and has a right to his property."

With hot tears of resentment grandmother, accompanied by Theodora, went to the wagon-house cellar to get the book. After some minutes they returned, exclaiming that they could not find it!