"I would like him—lots, if he didn't—if he wasn't such a killer. I like his knowing so much about birds and animals—he says he can whistle a squirrel out of a tree, any time, and that's more than even Jim can do. At least I never heard him say he could. And Jim Barlow will not kill anything. He simply will not. Even old Mrs. Stott had to kill her own poultry for the market though she'd strap him well for refusing. All the reason he'd tell her was that he could not make anything live, so he didn't think he'd any right to make it die. Mrs. Calvert, have—have you forgiven poor Jim for letting the dogs get away? and me too? Because I know he feels terrible. I do, and it makes me sort of ashamed to have you so kind to me when it was part my carelessness——"
"There, there, child! Have done with that affair. It was more amusing than annoying, for a time, and after I found my Danes were safe; but I hate old stories repeated, and that story is finished—for the present. There'll be more to come, naturally. One can't make a single new acquaintance without many unexpected things following. For instance: John Chester riding so familiarly in Archibald Montaigne's carriage and talking—Well, talking almost as his little daughter has been doing with her new friend. I overheard Mrs. Montaigne mention something about having once been a patient at a hospital in our city and that was the 'open sesame' to 'Johnnie's' confidence. Oh! it's a dear old world, isn't it? Where enemies can change into friends, all in one morning: and where people whom we didn't know at breakfast time have become our intimates by the dinner hour. This is a glorious day! See. We are almost at the turn of the road that leads to Skyrie. Slowly as we have come it hasn't taken us long. I'm glad I walked. It has done me good and—given my neighbors yonder a chance to know one another."
"I'm glad, too. I haven't enjoyed myself so much since we moved here, only, of course, when Dolly got home," responded Mrs. Chester. "Yet what an angry, disgusted woman I was when I went over this road before, lawsuit-wards, so to speak."
They were almost at the corner when Dorothy cast a last glance backward and exclaimed:
"I don't see Jim anywhere. Why do you suppose he didn't come? Where do you suppose he is?"
"Well, little girl, my supposing is that he felt himself not one with any of our party. 'Neither hay nor grass' he would likely express it. That's for his not coming. As for where he is now I suppose, to a degree that is certainty, that he is—doing his duty! From my brief acquaintance with the lad I judge that to be his principal idea. His duty, this morning, would have been the transplanting of the celery seedlings, which yesterday's events delayed. If we could look through the trees between us and my vegetable garden I believe we should see him bending over the rows of little green plants, oblivious to all that's going on around him, so intent is he on making up for lost time and not cheating his employer by wasting it. Jim Barlow is all right. I was angry enough with him yesterday, for a while, but I can do him justice, to-day."
Her guess at his whereabouts was correct. The lad had hurried away from Seth Winters's office and was already well along with his work while they were thus discussing him. But both his new mistress and Dorothy promptly forgot him when they came to that turn of the road they had been approaching and the view beyond lay open to them.
For an instant everybody stopped, even the coachman checked his horses in amazement, though he as swiftly resumed his ordinary impassive expression and drove forward again at the risk of disaster.
"What in the world! It looks like a—a funeral! Or the county fair! Whatever does that mean?" cried Mrs. Cecil, who was the first to voice her astonishment. Yet she wondered if she heard aright when, clasping her hands in dismay, Mrs. Chester almost shouted to her husband in front—riding backwards and thus unable to see at what they all so earnestly gazed:
"John, John! That dreadful advertisement!"