Slipping his hand into Hartmann's, Willem turned his back on the platformful of perspiring beneficiaries and, together, the two struck off down the yellow, dusty road toward the double row of giant elms that marked the beginning of the village street.
Willem shuffled in high contentment alongside his big companion. And as he walked, he stole upward and sidelong glances of furtive hero worship at the tall, plainly clad figure. Jim Hartmann was of a build and aspect to rouse such worship in the frail little fellow. He had the shoulders, the chest girth, the stride of an athlete, tempered by the slight roundness of those same shoulders, the non-expansiveness of chest, and the heavy tread of the large man whose strength and physique have been acquired at manual labour instead of in athletics. A figure more common east of the Atlantic than in America.
His dark suit was neat and fitted honestly well. But it was palpably not the suit of a man whose father had worn custom-made clothes or whose own earlier youth had been blessed with such garments. Yet there was a breezy, staunch outdoorness about the whole man that reminded one of a breath of mountain air in a close room and left half unnoticed the details of costume and bearing.
"Weren't you glad to get away from New York City?" queried the boy as they came into the elm shade of Grimm Manor's one real street. "A week is an awful long time to be away from here."
"You bet it is. You're a lucky chap to be able to stay at Grimm Manor all the time instead of being sent here, there, and everywhere on business."
"I shouldn't like that," assented the boy; "I think people would be very liable of losing their way. I wonder if Mynheer Peter will send me 'here, there, and everywhere on business' when I'm older."
"Perhaps," agreed Hartmann, catching the slight note of wistfulness in Willem's voice. "You're beginning the way I began. It wasn't more than a week after my father got his gardening job with Mr. Grimm that I used to be sent up to meet the trains with a basket of flowers and 'the compliments of Peter Grimm.' It seems more like yesterday than eighteen years ago."
"I'm glad you're back from New York City," said the boy, circling back to the conversation's starting-point. "It's been rather lonely. Mynheer Peter has been so busy. And Frederik——"
"Well," queried Jim as the boy checked himself and looked nervously behind him, "what about Frederik? And why do you always look like that when you speak of him?"
"Like what?"