“Well, Mr. Marcy calls me a kind of aid-de-camp to him and Mrs. Ingraham, the housekeeper, too, particularly when there is danger of the kitchen running short of supplies. Now and then, if the farmers around here fail us, I have to spend half the day driving about the country, or you might starve at supper-table all at once. O, and then I look after one or two books in the office!”
Gerald laughed.
“Papa has kept me here because he heard so much about the table; and because Mr. Marcy told him there were so few boys that I couldn’t get into mischief. Papa used to be a broker, but he don’t do any thing now. I believe he retired, or whatever they call it, a year or so ago. He’s been camping out with a party of gentlemen from the Stock Exchange ever since midsummer away up in Nova Scotia. I haven’t any mother either.”
“Why didn’t you go with them?” inquired Philip, guiding Nebuchadnezzar skillfully through an irregular series of puddles. The view of the rolling green country, dotted with farm-houses and gray or red barns, was now worth looking at as they came out on the flat hill-top.
“I should have liked to go very much; but papa said that they were all expecting to ‘rough it,’ and the weather might be too cold for me. He was afraid I would be sick or something, and I know I’d be a good deal of trouble to him. Hasn’t it stayed hot, though? I suppose they are having a splendid time up there all by themselves hunting and fishing. He wrote me that there wasn’t a house within five miles of them. In October we are to meet in New York again. School begins next week; but I’m not to hurry back this year.”
Gerald spoke of the “splendid time” rather wistfully. The little fellow had been lonely in the big Ossokosee, Philip fancied.
“What school do you go to?” inquired Gerald after a moment; “that is, when you are in New York?”
“Not to any now,” soberly responded Philip, with a frown coming over his forehead. It was the secret grief of his spirit that he had not been able to advance further in a thorough education. When Gerald spoke of his holidays coming to an end; he involuntarily envied this boy. “But before I came to live so much with Mr. Marcy, and when my mother was alive, I went to the Talmage School.”
“Why, that’s my school now!” exclaimed Gerald, smiling. “How queer! But it’s a pretty old school.”
And then came interrogations as to what pupils or teachers had been there in Philip’s school-days.