Tom laid hold of the books with a will. Black, his coat off, set them up, thereby indisputably demonstrating that two hundred and thirty-one volumes, even though a round two dozen of them be bulky with learning, certainly do fill an inconceivably small space.
“Well, anyhow,” he said, resting from his labours, and determinedly turning away from the embarrassing testimony of the bookshelves as to his resources, to the invitation of the massive desk to be equipped with the proper appliances to work, “a few pictures and things will help to make it look as if somebody lived here. I’ve several pretty good photographs and prints I thought I’d frame when I got here—I’ve been saving them up for some time.”
He exhibited the collection with pride—they had lain across the top of the books. Tom Lockhart hung over them critically.
“They’re bully!” was his judgment. “Not a bit what I’d have expected. Not a saint or a harp among ’em. Oh, gee!—that horse race is great! Where’d you get that? I mean—it’s foreign, isn’t it?”
Black laughed. “That’s just a bit of a hurdle race we had in a little town down South. I’m on one of those horses.”
“You are! Oh, yes—I see—on the front one! Why, say—” he turned to Black, enthusiasm lighting his face—“you’re one of those regular horse-riding Southerners. This is on your family estate, I’ll wager.”
Black’s face flushed a little, but his eyes met the boy’s frankly. “I was born in Scotland, and came over here when I was sixteen. I worked for the man who lived in that house back there at the left. He let me ride his horses. I broke the black one for him—and rode him to a finish in that race. I was only seventeen then.”
Tom stared for a minute before his manners came to the rescue. “That’s awfully interesting,” he said then, politely. Black could see the confusion and wonderment in his mind as plainly as if the boy had given expression to it. If the information had let Tom down a little, the next instant he rallied to the recognition that here was a man out of the ordinary. Tom was not a snob, but he had never before heard a minister own to “working” for anybody, and it had startled him slightly. But when he regarded Black, he saw a man who, while he looked as if he had never worked for anybody, had not hesitated to declare that he had. Tom thought he liked the combination.
“If you could tell me of a good place to get these framed,” Black said, gathering up the photographs and prints as he spoke, “I believe I’ll have it done right away. It’s the one thing that’ll make this big house seem a little more like home.”
“That’s right. And I can tell you a peach of a place—in fact I’ll take you there, if you want to go right now. It’s on our way back home. By the way—” young Tom glanced round the big bare room—“if there’s any stuff you want to get for the house to give it a kind of a jolly air, you know, you’ll find it right there, at Jane Ray’s. She can advise you, too.”