Mr. Mallett did not look up from his task. “Keep ’em long as you please. They’re there to sell for old iron. Whoa, you brute!�
“Thank you!� Dick went away then, but at dusk that evening he slipped back to the shop and got the pick and spade and sledge hammer he had set aside, and sped down the unlighted street and deposited them under the churchyard hedge.
Many an hour, during the days that followed, while he sat with a textbook in his hand, he was in fancy unearthing vast treasures and displaying them to the envy and admiration of his comrades. Slowly, oh! very slowly, the days went by that kept him chained to his tasks at home.
One pleasant afternoon in mid-April, the children drifted out of school, in the usual merry chattering groups. The Village schoolhouse was across The Street from The Roost. It was a quaint, ivy-mantled brick cottage, the old “office,� in the corner of the yard at Broad Acres. Broad Acres, once a lordly estate, was now “broad acres� in name only. Farm after farm, field after field, had passed from the family ownership until the mansion, with the rambling yard and garden, was all that was left.
The house was a stately red-brick building with wide halls and spacious, high-ceilinged rooms. Mrs. Wilson, who lived there with her daughter Ruth, spent her days teaching A B C’s to babies and preparing Dick and the older boys for the university. People who were able paid her in money or wood or meal or shoes, and she accepted their pupils and fees, but oh! how she struggled to get the children whose parents were too poor to pay for schooling or to realize its value.
“I wish and I wish you weren’t going away, Anne, you precious darling Anne!� Patsy wailed for the twentieth time, giving Anne Lewis a frantic embrace.
“It’s a horrid shame!� exclaimed Ruth Wilson.
“But I’m coming back in the summer,� Anne said, to comfort them and herself. “Oh! and, Patsy, won’t we have a lovely time, going around with Dick!� she said, with a mischievous glance at Patsy’s twin.
“Bet you will—not!� declared Dick.
“And think what a good time we’ll all have at Happy Acres.�