When poverty and loneliness fell upon him, the boy had no youthful ameliorations, even though he was so touchingly young. Occasionally some old friend of his grandfather’s encountered him somewhere and gave him rather florid good advice; some kindly matron, perhaps, asked him to come and see her; but there was no one in the place who could do anything practical. Delisleville had never been a practical place, and now its day seemed utterly over. Its gentlemanly pretence at business had received blows too heavy to recover from until times had lapsed; in some of the streets tiny tufts of grass began to show themselves between the stones.
As he had walked back in the heat, Rupert had observed these tiny tufts of green with a new sense of their meaning. He was thinking of them as he lay upon the grass, the warm scent of the mock-orange blossoms and roses, mingled with honeysuckle in the air, the booming of the bees among the multiflora blooms was in his ears.
“What can I do?” he said to himself. “There is nothing to be done here. There never was much, and now there is nothing. I can’t loaf about and starve. I won’t beg from people, and if I would, I haven’t a relation left who isn’t a beggar himself—and there are few enough of them left.”
He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a well-worn greenback. He straightened out its creases cautiously and looked at it.
“I’ve got two dollars,” he said, “and no prospect of getting any more. Even Matt can’t make two dollars last long.”
The latch of the side gate clicked and the gate opened. Presently Uncle Matt appeared round the rose-bushes. He had his market basket on his arm and wore a thoughtful countenance.
“Uncle Matt!” Rupert called out to him. “I wish you would come here.”
Notwithstanding his darkling moods, he was in a subtle way singularly like Delia Vanuxem. He needed love and tenderness, and he was boy enough yet to be unhappy and desolate through lack of them, though without quite knowing why. He knew Uncle Matt loved him, and the affectionate care the old man surrounded him with was like a warm robe wrapped about a creature suffering from chill. He had not analyzed his feeling himself; he only knew that he liked to hear his footsteps as he pottered about the house, and when he was at his dreariest, he was glad to see him come in, and to talk a little to him.
Uncle Matt came towards him briskly. He set his basket down and took off his hat.
“Marse Rupert,” he said, “dis hyer’s a pow’fle scorcher of a mawnin’. Dem young lawyers as shets up dey office an’ comes home to lie in de grass in de shade, dey is follerin’ up dey perfession in de profitablest way—what’ll be likely to bring ’em de mos’ clients, ’cause, sho’s yo’ bawn, dere’s sunstroke an’ ’cussion or de brain just lopin’ roun’ dis town—en a little hot brick office ain’t no place for a young man what got any dispect fur his next birfday. Dat’s so.”