“No, husband; you and I are far enough along to be thinking less of mere appearances than we might have done once. We have three children to school and start in the world; a new house won’t do that, but the money it would cost will.”
“May the Lord bless you,” cried Bradford Whitman, imprinting a fervent kiss on the lips of his wife, “and make me as thankful as I ought to be for the best wife a man ever had. You have just spoken my own mind right out.”
Alice Whitman blushed with pleasure at the commendation of her husband so richly deserved, and said,—
“Husband, that is not all. If we have something laid by we can open our hearts and hands to a neighbor’s necessities as we both like to do, and I am sure I had much rather help a poor fatherless child, give food to the hungry, or some comfort to a sick neighbor, than to live in a fine house and have nice things that after all are not so comfortable nor convenient as the old-fashioned ones.”
“You are right wife, for when John Gillespie was killed by a falling tree last winter and all the neighbors helped his widow and family, William Vinton said his disposition was to do as much as any one, but he hadn’t the means, and the reason was that the cost of his new house had brought him into difficulties. I knew it gave him a heartache to refuse, and I believe he would have much rather have had the old chest of drawers and the log-house and been able to give something to the fatherless, than to have the new house and the nice furniture and not be able to help a neighbor in distress. I hope Alice you won’t object to having the old house made a little better and more comfortable, providing it can be done without much expense.”
“If you will promise not to make it look unnatural, like an old man in a young man’s clothes and wig, and if you meddle with the roof (as most like you will) not to disturb the door that bears to-day the gash cut by the Indian’s tomahawk who chased your mother into the house, and that took the blow meant for her, nor meddle with the overhang above it, through which your father fired down and shot him.”
Bradford Whitman put a new roof on the house and ceiled the wall up inside with panel work, thus hiding the old logs. He also laid board floors instead of the old ones that were laid with puncheons (that is, sticks of timber hewn on three sides) that were irregular, hard to sweep over and to wash. But in his father’s bedroom he disturbed nothing, but left both the walls and the floors as they were before. The grandfather, though he made no remark, yet manifested some trepidation in his looks when the roof was taken off, and the floors taken up, and seemed very much relieved when he found that the walls on the outside were not disturbed, that the old door with its wooden latch, hinges and huge oaken bar, the former scarred with bullets and chipped with the tomahawks of the savages, remained as before. And when he found that his son, with a thoughtfulness that was part of his nature, had, after ceiling up the kitchen, replaced in its brackets of deer’s horns over the fireplace, the old rifle with which he had fought the savage and obtained food for his family in the bitter days of the first hard struggle for a foothold and a homestead, not only expressed decided gratification with the change but to the great delight of Alice Whitman desired that his bedroom might be panelled and have a board floor like the rest of the house. And the delighted daughter-in-law covered it with rugs, into the working of which were put all the ingenuity of hand and brain she possessed.
This was the family in which Robert Wilson desired to place James Renfew, for notwithstanding in his passion, he had wished that James had stuck the axe into his neck instead of his leg, he was really interested in, and felt for, the lad, and wanted to help him.
He knew Bradford Whitman well, knew that he was as shrewd as kindly-affectioned, and that he was bitterly prejudiced against the business of soul-driving in which he was engaged, as Wilson had for years vainly endeavored to persuade him to take a redemptioner; but he had heard from the miller that Mr. Whitman was coming to the mill in a few days with wheat, and he resolved to make a desperate effort to prevail upon him to take James.
“He’s a kindly man,” said Wilson to the miller, “perhaps he’ll pity the lad when he comes to see him.”