“Oh, bother!” said the boy, “I forgot all about him. He’s my tutor, you see,” he added, turning to Bruce, “and this is my sister Laura.”
Bruce took off his cap and bowed politely to the young girl, and she held out her hand and said, without any apparent reserve or shyness, “I saw you the other day when you brought Harry home; why didn’t you drive up in your wagon to-day? it must be fun to be a fireman; I wish you’d tell me all about it. Harry, you’d better go in the house and see Mr. Reed right off; he’s hopping mad, and if he don’t get over it before papa comes back, you’ll be locked up for another fortnight. Harry is always getting locked up,” she continued, turning to the visitor, who was listening with considerable surprise to this frank conversation between the brother and sister.
Harry disappeared into the house, saying that he would be out as soon as he had “squared himself with the professor,” and Laura took Bruce off to show him the stable where her pony was, and the barns and sheds in which were kept cows, pigs, dogs, and even a pair of goats.
Chapter IX.
The Van Kuren mansion and grounds constituted one of the finest places in the upper part of New York, and to Bruce, accustomed to plain ways of living, it seemed almost like some enchanted palace in fairyland. For fully an hour he strolled about the grounds under the guidance of Miss Laura Van Kuren, who talked to him as freely and frankly as if she had known him all her life. Harry was in disgrace, she said, for going off without consulting his tutor, and he would probably be kept in the house until he had learned and recited the lesson which had been given him that morning. Meantime she would entertain his guest herself, and as she was very pretty, very bright, and altogether very friendly and charming, Bruce did not feel the absence of her brother to any great extent. In fact, he was mean enough to hope in his secret heart that Mr. Reed would keep him in the house all the rest of the afternoon so that he and Laura might continue their confidential talk as they walked about together.
And as they talked, Bruce, who was naturally a diffident boy, became emboldened to such a degree that he made up his mind to ask the young girl if she knew anything about Mr. Dexter and the big, old fashioned house, which had seemed familiar ground to her. The opportunity for putting the question soon came. They were sitting together in a small summer house, eating some strawberries which they had picked in the garden, taking advantage of a moment when the gardener was off in another part of the grounds.
“Did you ever know a Mr. Dexter, who lives near here?” inquired Bruce, during a pause in the conversation.
The girl looked up quickly as she said, “You don’t mean that old gentleman who lives over there about half a mile along the road, do you?”
“Yes, he lives in a big square stone house,” said the boy.
Laura cast a hasty and apprehensive glance around her, and then said in lowered tones, as if she feared that some one were listening, “I know who he is, but papa won’t let us go near his house. Papa says that he’s a bad man and he won’t have anything to do with him, but I think he’s real nice, and one day, about a year ago, I was out walking near there, and he saw me and called me in and gave me some big bunches of splendid grapes, and then he asked me my name, and when I told him he seemed surprised, and somehow he wasn’t nice any more, and in a minute or two he told me that I had better run home or my people would be anxious about me. When I got home I told papa about it, and he was awfully angry, and said that I must never go into that yard again, and that if I saw Mr. Dexter coming I must run away. I asked him why, and he wouldn’t tell me. But where did you ever hear of him?”