The old gentleman showed him a wheelbarrow and crossbow he had made for Bertie, and the wheels and shafts he had made to break the colt in, and told him that James had made himself a nice chest, dovetailed it together, and painted it.
“Come, let us go into the house and find the specs.”
Mrs. Whitman received George in so kindly a manner that it relieved him of much of his embarrassment.
The old gentleman told Maria, when she went to call the men-folks to supper, to tell her father that George Orcutt was in the house and would stop to supper.
“Boys,” said Mr. Whitman, “George Orcutt is in the house; I suppose you can guess what has brought him here. He will feel embarrassed enough, no doubt, and I want you all to shake hands with him as if you meant it, and receive him as though nothing had happened, and as you did when he used to come here.”
“I am sure I will,” said Bertie; and so they all said, and did accordingly; but the grandfather excelled them all, for, as soon as they had shaken hands with George and talked a little, the former said, “James, I’ve been showing George your cart, and have told him about your chest. Why won’t you take him upstairs and let him see it?”
They went upstairs together.
“I think we had better sit down to the table,” said Mr. Whitman; “they will feel better to find us eating than they will to find us all sitting here still, and have to look us in the face when they come down.”
Before James and George came down, the boys and their father had eaten their supper and gone out, leaving James and George to eat together.
There were traces of tears on the cheeks of the latter, but he looked happy and as though a great load was lifted from his heart, and felt so much relieved that the boys persuaded him to pass the night with them. In the course of the evening he told Bertie that David Riggs and William Morse, who had also stopped at the meeting on the Sabbath succeeding the one upon which he stopped, felt as he did, and wanted to do likewise, but did not know how to bring it about. The four friends talked the matter over, and it was resolved to invite David and William to the log-rolling and the supper afterwards, and George was commissioned to invite and come with them.