“Yes, I know you did,” said Touchtone. “It seemed so odd and unexpected. I was glad. But come, we wont talk any more now. You must try to get to sleep. I’ve been awfully thoughtless. Does your head ache as hard as it did?”
“Not nearly; and instead of being as hot and as miserable as I was I believe I’m better.” His hands and temples were cooler, and after a few moments of silence Philip thankfully noticed that he dozed. The doze became a slumber.
Philip made the room less light. He was thinking of the patient cow and wondering whether he could safely go to her. Suddenly the sound of the dog’s barking came into the windows. It did not waken the sick boy. Noiselessly he hurried from the room into the kitchen and around the corner of the house, where Towzer appeared to be standing in some sudden fit of vigilance.
A man and a woman were coming up from the dock, where a large cat-boat was moored. They were looking toward the farm-house and at the smoke in the garden in evident perturbation. At the sight of his own figure hastening toward the gate to meet and admit them their haste and surprise doubled. On they came. They were loaded with a couple of large carpet-bags and innumerable bundles. They were middle-aged people. The man was low-statured, smooth-faced, and a little stout; the woman tall and angular. Their shrewd, puzzled faces were kindly, and the man waved an unknown reply to Philip’s gesture of recognition. He could hear them exchanging ejaculations and queries.
“The Probascos, for certain—at last!” he exclaimed. Advancing toward the couple outside the gate, bareheaded, he bowed and repeated the name interrogatively, “Mr. and Mrs. Obed Probasco, of this place, I believe?” as they came up.
The farmer dropped his belongings and answered in a bewilderment that had nothing of ill-nature, “The same, sir, at your service, sartin sure. An’ who might I have the pleasure of addressin’?”
[CHAPTER XIV.]
ALLIES.
The question concluding the preceding chapter of this history took more than a moment or so to answer, as the reader may suppose. Open-mouthed, as well as open-eared, with their packages, one by one, dropped heedlessly in the grassy path that led up from the little dock, “Obed Probasco and Loreta his wife” halted before Philip, still ejaculating, questioning, and with their astonishment of one kind giving place to that of another as Philip proceeded with his story. He leaned against the fence and, talking now with one, now the other, related his strange experience. The amazed New England couple turned and looked into each other’s eyes at every few sentences, with many a “My gracious me!” “Did ever any body hear the like?” “You don’t mean that you”—did so and so; and by Obed’s frequent “Well, this beats all creation, fur as I know it!” Even Touchtone’s anxiety and their curiosity as to Gerald could not retard their eagerness to learn all the facts.