“I will talk more when it is mine,” said Emile, with a little grin.
“What do you mean by that?” cried Phil.
“What do I mean?” said Emile, turning around and staring fixedly at Phil. “What I mean is zis. Just you listen and you will hear what I mean! Before you know it, zis place will belong to my father, which is ze same zing as mine. Before ze old man Berkeley died, and your good uncle was spending ever so much, and getting nothing, he borrowed, and borrowed, and borrowed money from my father; and when he came here, and had all this property, he was to pay it; but he wait, and wait, and he never pays it. And now my father he hears zat Mr. Godfrey is gone away, nobody knows where, and everybody zinks he will never come back——”
“That is a lie!” cried Phil. “His friends all know he will come back.”
“My father does not know it. He says he will never come back, and he sends me here to see, and I say he will never come back. We have a mortgage on zis place, and we will have it sold, and we zall buy it, and zall come here to live. And zose bells—zose angel bells—zall be put once more upon ze roof to dingle-dangle in ze wind. What do you zink of zat, Master Pheel?”
“I don’t believe one word of it!” cried Phil.
“You will believe it soon enough,” said Emile.
And turning away, he went up-stairs, leaving poor Phil in a state of excited misery.
In spite of his effort to convince himself that what the French boy had told him was merely an invention to annoy him, he could not help believing that the story was true.
He now saw the meaning of Emile’s interest in the place. He had been sent here to find out about everything, because he and his father expected to own everything. And he, Phil, could do nothing. If his uncle would only come back, and come quickly!