"Very well. See you Monday. Good-by!"
"Good-by!"
Robert Starbird chirruped to his horse, started on, and was soon lost to sight around a bend in the road.
And Pen strode back across the field, prouder and happier than he had ever been before in all his life.
But he still had Grandpa Walker to settle with.
At supper time, on the evening after his talk with Robert Starbird, Pen had no opportunity to inform his grandfather of the success of his application for employment. For, almost as soon as he left the table, Grandpa Walker got his hat and started down to the store to discuss politics and statecraft with his loquacious neighbors. But Pen felt that his grandfather should know, that night, of the arrangement he had made for employment, and so, after his evening chores were done, he went down to the gate at the roadside to wait for the old man to come home.
The air was as balmy as though it had been an evening in June. Somewhere in the trees by the fence a pair of wakeful birds was chirping. From the swamp below the hill came the hoarse croaking of bull-frogs. Above the summit of the wooded slope that lay toward Chestnut Hill the full moon was climbing, and, aslant the road, the maples cast long shadows toward the west.
To Pen, as he stood there waiting, came his mother. A wrap was around her shoulders, and a light scarf partly covered her head. She had finished her evening work and had come out to find him.
"Are you waiting for grandpa?" she asked; though she knew without asking, that he was.
"Yes," was the reply. "I want to see him about leaving. I had a talk with Mr. Starbird this afternoon, in the road, and he's given me the job he spoke about. I wasn't going to tell you until after I'd seen grandpa, and the trouble was all over."