“I know,” said Walter, and added, “saw it in your room this morning.”
“Did you! Good! Well, go to it, old man; and don’t forget to work up a proper thirst.”
Walter grinned and sauntered down the hill. He understood. It was a bribe to keep him quiet. Oh, that Richard Richard was a smart one, a good fellow to keep next to! He wasn’t straight with others, but what did Walter care? Something crooked about this Richard Richard—too glib and good-looking to be anything but crooked—but Walter was done with good people. He was a bad man and Richard was his sort. All right. He would not squeal, but he would have to get his “divvy.” That’s all he cared about. So long as they let him alone and gave him his share, they could make off with the whole shooting match.... Nice little revenge on mother, too; she thought herself so smart, and now she was being taken in all right.... Go to jail, eh? He wondered if Richard Richard was clever enough to keep out of jail. He hoped so. He would never “squeal.” As far as Walter was concerned there’d be no killing of golden-egg geese.
From the porch Richard could see the boy—in spite of his twenty-two years one could think of him only as a boy—as he stumbled slowly down the hill, disappeared for a few minutes in a growth of striking Lombardy poplar on the very water’s edge, and pushed out in a tender to George Alexander’s cat-boat. He watched the tender made fast to the floating buoy, saw the sail go creaking up, fill and send the boat like a live thing out towards Bluff Point and the main branch of the Lake.
Lake Keuka—Keuka is Seneca for “crooked”—is shaped like a bent-over “Y” with Penn Yan at the right-hand upper tip, “Red Jacket” at the left and Bluff Point protruding into the stem. From the porch Richard could see the whole length of the left-hand branch of the Y and a mile or so on to the farther shore of the “stem.” It was a soul-filling sight; but he had room enough left in his soul to consider Walter and to begin the perfecting of a plan for getting him on his feet, first physically and then mentally.
He was in the midst of what looked like splendid strategy when Geraldine appeared dressed for a swim. She wore an easy-fitting suit which stopped at the knees, a brown stuff—like taffeta silk, guessed Richard, it being the only silk he knew by name except crêpe de Chine; and as it melted down into brown stockings and brown moccasins and up into a brown band about the hair, Jerry stood revealed an Indian princess. That is what he told her—that and other things—after he had recovered from the delight of looking at her. He said all this in the presence of Mrs. Wells, who had come out under the shelter of Tshoti and his three sentinels to take an enforced rest in a “rocker.”
“Your bathing suit, Richard, is down at ‘Lombardy,’” said Jerry, “just back of that row of Lombardy poplars, Mrs. Norris’ cottage. She keeps extra suits for us and lets us track our wet feet all over her house. Mrs. Norris is a gem and a saint; if you don’t worship her we’ll all hate you, won’t we, mother?”
“Oh, yes, indeed,” mother rocked away. “Phœbe Norris is a saint, if there ever was one on earth. She lived ten years with a crazy husband, took care of him and kept him easy in his mind until he fortunately died for her. And now she lives for others. She rents her vineyard out on half-shares, which gives her all she wants in this world.”
“So she spends her time preparing for the next?” Richard queried.
“Oh, she’s not that kind of saint!” Both women laughed at the thought. “She’s——”