"Don't know exactly why," he continued, retrospectively, "but there never were nearly so many trout here as in the west brook. I meant to have given you and Addison a day to go over there before now, but work has been rather pressing ever since you came."
I rose from the stone, thinking—and not wholly sorry to think—that suicide must necessarily be postponed for that day, at least; for I could not, of course, harrow the old gentleman's feelings by plunging into the Little Sea before his very eyes. He seemed so guileless, too, and so wholly unsuspecting of my fell design!
As we walked away, he told me of great trout which he had caught when a boy, particularly of one big three-pound trout which he had captured at a deep hole in the west brook, down near the lake.
My mind was still too much disturbed to enjoy these piscatorial reminiscences, however; and noting this, after a time, Gramp opened another subject with me.
"A man has lately made an offer for my farm and timber lands here," said he. "I do not know that I shall accept it; but I have had some thoughts of selling and moving out West. If I should, I suppose you would have to go back to Philadelphia. If I went West to look for a farm, I should call at Philadelphia on my way. You and I would make the trip there together."
It is astonishing what an effect that last remark of grandfather's produced upon me. The whole world changed from deepest, darkest blue to rose color in one minute; and I said, provisionally, to myself that even if he did not sell so that we could start for a month, I could perhaps endure it.
Observing the cheerier light in my face, probably, the old gentleman laughed good-naturedly. He had not forgotten what it is to be a boy and feel a boy's intense sorrows as well as joys; and he went on to say that a journey to Philadelphia was a mere nothing nowadays. Why, one might start, as for instance, that morning and be at Philadelphia the next morning at eleven o'clock!
But how glad I was that he did not notice that I was homesick! He did not even appear to mistrust such a thing. And as for drowning myself, well, the less said or thought about that now the better.
I walked back to the house with the Old Squire; and I got him to let me carry the axe, for I wanted Addison and Halse to think that Gramp and I had been off mending fence together.
At intervals, however, for a month or more, I continued to be afflicted by transient spasms of homesickness, but none of them were as severe as these first ones, and they gradually ceased altogether.