“Don’t open the door until I come. It might be a tramp,” Eliza called after her. Beth hesitated. Eliza came into the living-room with a lamp in hand. Beth kept close to her while the door was opened.
It really was a tramp—the same one they had seen at the Oliver place. But he was good looking, clean and smiling. He even removed his hat while he addressed Miss Eliza.
“Good evening; I have come up to ask a favor,” he said.
CHAPTER XIII.
“I’m to be your neighbor for the winter,” he said. “My experience as house-keeper is limited. I set up my Lares and Penates to-day and forgot that man must eat. Will you sell me bread and fresh eggs?”
“Lares and Penates,” both Eliza and Beth knew the meaning of those words. Roman mythology! A strange tramp, indeed, who could quote this.
“Will you come in?” asked Eliza. Tramp or not, his clear gray eyes were too fine and commanding to permit his being kept outside the door.
He entered and took the proffered seat before the grate in which a few chunks of wood were smoldering.
“These wood-fires are delightful,” he said. “I do not wonder that the age of poetry and romance have passed away. It was one with the open grate. What mind of man can conceive of poetry being written before a register or radiator?”
Eliza had nothing to say to this. The conversation was not just what she expected from a tramp. She went to the kitchen and counted out the eggs and took a loaf of fresh bread from the box. She was sorry for the man. He looked so fine and interesting. It was to be regretted that he allowed himself to be a wanderer. Miss Eliza felt a sense of duty. It grieved her to see one who appeared so bright and attractive waste his life wandering upon the earth. When she heard him sing and whistle in the woods that afternoon, she had thought him a young man. There was the joyousness and buoyancy of youth in his looks and voice. To-night, however, she saw that he was not a boy, but a man fully her own age. She prepared his basket for him, while her heart was heavy.