"By gol, I wonder what's doin'?" said another. "Reckon he's done tuk up with Nan Bryerson, afte' all's been said an' done?"
Bastrop Clegg, whose distinction was that of being the oldest loafer in the circle, spat accurately into the drafthole of the stove, sat back and tilted his hat over his eyes.
"Well, boys, I reckon hit's erbout time, ain't hit?" he moralized. "Leetle Tom must be a-goin' awn two year old; and I don't recommember ez Tom 'r his pappy has ever done a livin' thing for Nan."
Whereupon one member of the group got up and addressed himself to the door. It was Japheth Pettigrass; and what he said was said to the starlit night outside.
"My Lord! that ther' boy was lyin' to me, after all! I didn't believe hit that night when he r'ared and took on so to me and 'lowed to chunk me with a rock, and I don't want to believe hit now. But Lordy gracious! hit do look mighty bad, with him a-buyin' all that outfit and loadin' hit in his pappy's buggy; hit do, for shore!"
A half-hour later, Brother Japheth, trudging back to Deer Trace on the pike, saw the light in the long-deserted cabin back of the new foundry plant; saw this and was overtaken at the Woodlawn gates by Thomas Jefferson with Longfellow and the buggy. And he could not well help observing that the buggy had been lightened of its burden of household supplies.
Tom turned the horse over to William Henry Harrison and went in to his belated dinner somberly reflective. He was not sorry to find that his mother and father had gone over to the manor-house. Solitude was grateful at the moment; he was glad of the chance to try to think himself uninterruptedly out of the snarl of misunderstanding in which his impulsiveness had entangled him.
The pointing of the thought was to see Ardea and have it out with her at once. Reconsidered, it appeared the part of prudence to wait a little. The muddiest pool will settle if time and freedom from ill-judged disturbance be given it. But we, who have known Thomas Jefferson from his beginnings, may be sure that it was the action-thought that triumphed. They also serve who only stand and wait, was meaningless comfort to him; and when he had finished his solitary dinner and had changed his clothes, he strode across the double lawns and rang the manor-house bell.