Peter noticed the boy's mood and laid his hand on his wrist. Somehow this was not the same Jack.
“I haven't hurt you, my son, have I?” he asked with a note of tenderness in his voice.
“Hurt me! You couldn't hurt me, Uncle Peter!” There was no question of his sincerity as he spoke. It sprang straight from his heart.
“Well, then, what's the matter?—out with it. No secrets from blundering old Peter,” he rejoined in a satisfied tone.
Jack laughed gently: “Well, sir, it's about the work.” It wasn't; but it might lead to it later on.
“Work!—what's the matter with the work! Anything wrong?” There was a note of alarm now that made Jack reply hastily:
“No, it will be finished next month: we are lining up the arches this week and the railroad people have already begun to dump their cross ties along the road bed. It's about another job. Mr. MacFarlane, I am afraid, hasn't made much money on the fill and tunnel, but he has some other work offered him up in Western Maryland, which he may take, and which, if he does, may pay handsomely. He wants me to go with him. It means a shanty and a negro cook, as near as I can figure it, but I shall get used to that, I suppose. What do you think about it?”
“Well,” chuckled Peter—it was not news; MacFarlane had told him all about it the week before at the Century—“if you can keep the shanty tight and the cook sober you may weather it. It must be great fun living in a shanty. I never tried it, but I would like to.”
“Yes, perhaps it is,—but it has its drawbacks. I can't come to see you for one thing, and then the home will be broken up. Miss Ruth will go back to her grandmother's for a while, she says, and later on she will visit the Fosters at Newport and perhaps spend a month with Aunt Felicia.” He called her so now.
Jack paused for some further expression of opinion from his always ready adviser, but Peter's eyes were still fixed on the slow, dying fire.