“In our stable: Comet? To be there all the time so I could go out to see him every single day, and he’d grow to love me just as Baltie did? Do you really mean it? Could I?”
“I think Comet will meet your advances more than half way. He has been treated like a child since his colthood, and you know how he understands me. I’ve had a long talk with the little mother, and she has agreed to let me keep Comet down there, and my man Parsons is to take care of him, to sleep in the coachman’s room upstairs and board with Mammy. You know most of his color find ‘just naturally doing nothing’ quite to their liking; but Parsons seems to be of different clay, so we will make him happy by keeping him busy. Good plan all around, don’t you think so?”
“I think you are just the splendidest, dearest man that ever lived, and Comet shall have the best care in all the world, and if any living being so much as points a finger at him I’ll—I’ll—well, I just tell you, they’d better not! Now, let’s go right back home and tell Connie all about it. You know she loves Comet as much as you or I love him, and she’ll be tickled to death to have him right there,” and Jean bounded to her feet all enthusiasm, her eyes shining and cheeks glowing, for something to love and care for was absolutely essential to Jean’s happiness.
And so it came to pass that about a week later Comet was installed in the Carruth stable, and if ever a horse came into an earthly paradise, Comet came into one in this new home.
Jean was in a rapture, and truly no horse-lover could fail to fall complete victim to Comet’s charms. It was the balm needed for Jean’s sorrow for Baltie, and when, in the course of the following weeks, a granite shaft was placed over Baltie’s grave, the little girl was as happy as she well could be.
The shaft bore the legend:
TO BALTIE.
_For Thirty Years a Faithful Friend and Servitor._
Perhaps in some more blissful realm
Your eyes will beam on us again,
And we shall find that great and small,
God _is_ the father of us all.
[CHAPTER XV—Mammy Makes a Discovery.]
June had come, and with June came Eleanor’s graduation. During her various holidays Eleanor had returned to Riveredge, and with each return of Eleanor there was vigorous renewal of visits from Homer Forbes. Forbes seemed deeply occupied in the intervals, and those most interested in the progress of affairs at the Irving School wondered at his long absence during the afternoons and his frequent walks up the mountain to a plateau at its summit. More than once had some of the pupils of the Irving School met him as he strolled along toward it, head bent in deepest meditation, hat drawn down over his eyes, hands clasped behind him, and “munchin’, munchin’, munchin’, fer all de spi’t an’ image ob a goat,” said Mammy, who frequently came upon him as he passed through the Arcade, for he never set forth upon his rambles without fortifying himself with a box of Constance’s candies.
Since the fall Jean had not journeyed to the Irving School with her candies, so the sweet-tooth Forbes was obliged to go after his sweeties or do without them. But it did not seem to inconvenience him. The Arcade lay upon his way, and nothing short of dynamite was ever likely to hurry him. He would buy his box of chocolates and start off, leaving behind him a little trail of the paraffin papers in which they had been wrapped, and by which anyone so minded might have followed him miles. Sometimes, if he had absent-mindedly forgotten to eat any luncheon, he would supplement his box of candies with some of Mammy’s sandwiches, and it was upon one of these occasions that his call at Mammy’s counter led to a curious disclosure.