To Gerald, who was quite wide awake to reflections upon a good many more problems than thinkers of his age often pause over, already there seemed to be something like a mystery hanging around this young Touchtone. He made up his mind that his new friend did not appear a shade out of place this morning driving around a hotel-wagon after butter and eggs from the farms. But he also decided if he should meet Philip in a tennis-suit with a group of the most “aristocratic” lads of Murray Hill, or see him marching about the floor at some crowded “reception” given by the school, why, Touchtone would look just as much in his proper surroundings—only more so. While he was assenting to these ideas something else occurred to make the younger boy puzzled about the older one.
A buggy came spinning along the road to meet them. From the front leaned out a young man, ten or twelve years older than Touchtone, wearing a brown beard. He checked his horse as he approached and called out some words that Gerald at once knew were German. Philip laughed and answered them in the same language quite as fluently. The occupant of the buggy—Gerald rightly supposed him the young German doctor that lived in the village—began quite a chat with Touchtone entirely in German. Both spoke so rapidly that Gerald found his study of the language at the Talmage School did not help him to catch more than an occasional “ja” or “nein.”
The young doctor rode on.
“How well you must know German,” said Gerald, admiringly. “Did you learn it across the water?” the boy added, half in joke.
“Yes,” responded Touchtone, to the astonishment of the other lad. “I learned it in Hanover, when I was there, before we lived near New York.”
Gerald happened to glance at Philip’s face. It was oddly red, and his voice sounded strangely. All this time, too, there was certainly one particular person to whom he had not so much as referred. But after Gerald had bethought himself of this omission and put his next question he would have given a great deal not to have uttered it. The regret did not come until he had asked Philip point-blank:
“I think you said that your—your father was dead, didn’t you? Was that after you came back?”
Philip made no reply. A blush reddened his frank face painfully. His pleasant expression had given place to an angry look. He gave unoffending Nebuchadnezzar a sharp cut with the long whip, as if to conceal mortification in showing his feelings, whatever they arose from, to a comparative stranger. He looked away from Gerald’s startled blue eyes toward the flag-crowned gables of the Ossokosee House, that now were in full sight, as the wagon turned into one of the graveled avenues leading to the kitchen.
“My father died after we came home,” he said, as if he had to face himself to speak of something that he could hardly bear to think of. “I was born in Germany, and lived there until we sailed.”