I blushed because she had divined that I intended to tell him about her mother, but comforted myself with the reflection that she could not know for a certainty.
My mother was waiting for us; and the place was so quiet and pleasant, and the late dinner she had prepared so good, that I began to feel like a very favored fellow. Jo and the man of the house were away somewhere, and we spent the afternoon like three happy children, suddenly free from some exacting restraint. Agnes and I made so much of my mother, that I remember her as being happier on that day than any other, and when I think of her now, so long after, I am glad that it is as she sat in her easy chair between us that afternoon, saying little, but looking content and happy.
CHAPTER X.
JO ERRING MAKES A FULL CONFESSION.
INASMUCH as that young man continued to haul stone to Erring’s Ford for a dam, and would talk of nothing else, it became certain, in course of time, that Jo would never make a farmer; so it was agreed, at a convention attended by my father and my grandmother, that he should be apprenticed for two years to Damon Barker, of the establishment on Bull River. Barker had suggested it, I believe, as he needed some one to assist him, and was much pleased with Jo besides, who had already learned to help him in many ways during visits to the place. These visits were allowed to become frequent and protracted when it was decided that he should be sent there to learn milling as a business. When it was announced to Jo that the arrangement had been made—it was one Sunday afternoon—he took me out to the hayloft of the stable to talk about it.
“I am to be given a chance,” he said, “and that is all I ask. I intend to work hard, and at the end of two years I shall be in position to commence my mill in earnest. I am seventeen years old now; I shall be nineteen then, and by the time I am twenty-one, ‘Erring’s Mill’ will be in operation. It seems a very long time to wait, and a big undertaking, but it is the best I can do.”
He was lying on his back, looking through the holes in the roof at the sky, and I thought more than ever that he was brave and capable, and that he had always been treated unjustly in Fairview. I was thinking—it had not occurred to me before—that I should be very lonesome without him; and he seemed to be thinking of it, too, for he said:—
“But it is only for three or four years, Ned,” as if we had been talking instead of thinking of the separation, “and at the end of that time I may be able to make you my assistant, or, better still, my partner. We have had a very wretched time of it in the past, but there may be a great deal of pleasure in store for us in the future. If we work as hard as we expect, I believe everything will come out right yet. They say you are old of your age. I am not old of my age; on the other hand I am very dull: but I shall be a man then, and in any event one need not be old to be useful. People here think differently, but it is because the community is slow and ignorant. Here the man who owns a piece of land and a team is supposed to have accomplished all that it is possible for a man to accomplish; but Barker told me once that there are men who make a Fairview fortune in a day. I don’t want to be like the people here, for none of them are contented or happy; but I intend to be like the people who I am certain live in other countries. I cannot believe but that there is a better way to live than that accepted at Fairview, and that somewhere—I don’t know where, for I have never travelled—happy homes may be found, and contented people, where parents love their children, and where people love their homes. Therefore I shall begin differently, and work harder, and to more purpose, than the people here have done, to the end that I may be a different man.”
Heaven help you, Jo, in that. There never was a happy man in Fairview, and I hoped with all my heart that Jo might become one, as he deserved.
“I have always been lonely and friendless,” he went on. “They never wanted me at home; your father never seemed satisfied with me here, and, excepting you, I have never had a friend in my life. I care nothing for my family; I fear it is sad depravity, but I cannot help it. They have never treated me well, and care nothing for me, and I cannot feel kindly toward them, for no one can love without a reason. You do not fall in love with the woman that wounds you, but you do fall in love with the woman that is kind to you. I think a great deal of you, but you gave me reason for it by thinking a great deal of me. I never knew until I thought of going away how much I did think of you.”
He talked so pitifully of the neglect to which he had always been subject, and I knew so well it was true, that I could only reply through my tears that he was my best friend, and that I thought more of him than any one else in the world.