Everything was interesting—the sights, the smells, the blossoms which were all around them; even the sprig of lobelia which Tom presented for his cousins’ tasting, having first cunningly prepared the way with spearmint and pennyroyal—how Kate wished she could return the favor with a green persimmon!—and the slender yellow worm, industriously measuring the bushes, had its own claim to attention. Its name and manner of travel reminded Kate of one of Aunt Milly’s songs with an admonishing refrain of, “Keep an inching along, Keep an inching along,” and she trolled it out with a rollicking plantation accent that charmed her audience.
Perhaps it was the singing which drew a traveller who was climbing up the hill in their direction. In a pause of the verses Tom suddenly exclaimed: “Upon my word, there’s Solomon Ridgeway. He’s got his pack on his back, too. Let’s have some fun.”
It was indeed the queer protégé of Aunt Katharine who appeared at that moment, bowing and smiling as he emerged from behind a rock. Evidently Tom did not share his grandfather’s extreme dislike for the man’s society, for he advanced to meet him in the most friendly manner.
“Well, Solomon,” he exclaimed, “so you thought you’d come huckleberrying, too! Do you expect to fill that box of yours this afternoon?”
The face of the little old man, which was fairly twinkling with pleasure, expressed an eager dissent. “Oh, no, I—I didn’t come huckleberryin’,” he said, “and I couldn’t think of puttin’ ’em in this box. Why this box—” he lowered his voice with a delighted chuckle—“has got some of my jewels in it You see, I’m goin’ over to see little Mary Berger. They say she’s got the mumps, and I kind o’ thought ’twould brighten her up to see ’em. It don’t hurt the children—bless their hearts—to see fine things; it does ’em good. And I always tell ’em,” he added earnestly, “that there air things better ’n pearls and rubies. Tain’t everybody that the Lord gives riches to, and if they’re good they’ll be happy without ’em.”
“Why, that’s quite a moral, Solomon,” said Tom. “You ought to have been a preacher.” He sent a roguish glance at the girls, then, throwing an accent of solicitude into his voice, added: “But aren’t you afraid you might get robbed going through those woods? There’s quite a strip of them before you get to Berger’s.”
The owner of the jewels sent an apprehensive glance into the woods which skirted the brow of the hill and answered bravely: “Yes, I be, Thomas. I be a little afeared of it. I—I won’t go so far as to say I ain’t. But I don’t b’lieve a body or’ to stan’ back on that account when there’s somethin’ they feel as if they or’ to be doin’, and I’ve always been took care of before—I’ve always been took care of.”
The manliness of this ought to have shamed Tom out of his waggishness, but he was not done with it yet. “Solomon,” he said, with the utmost gravity,—“I should think you’d want to get your property into something besides jewellery. Then you wouldn’t run such risks. Besides, if you had it in the bank, you know, it would be growing bigger all the time.”
The little man’s face wore a look of distress, and he put his hand on his box protectingly. “They tell me that sometimes,” he said in a plaintive tone, “but I—I couldn’t think of it. It wouldn’t be half as much comfort to me as ’tis this way. Besides, I’m rich enough now, and when a body’s got enough, it’s enough, ain’t it? And why can’t you settle down and take the good of it?”
“I think you’re quite right, Mr. Ridgeway,” said Stella. “It’s perfectly vulgar for people to go straining and scrambling after more money when they have as much as they can enjoy already. The world would be a good deal pleasanter place than it is if more people felt as you do about that.”