“Well, I’d jest as lieve ride,” said the man.
“Two men and a driver and a big bag aren’t going to squeeze into a buggy with seats for only two, if I can help it,” said Phil.
“Say,” whispered the native, confidentially, as the two reached the platform, “I b’lieve I know where I can borry a team as easy as fallin’ off of a log. Jest you stand here a minute or two,—all the boys is dyin’ to see you,—an’ I’ll hook up an’ be back.”
The man disappeared with great rapidity, for a being of his structural peculiarities. Phil looked quickly about, dashed across the track and under some sheltering trees in a small unlighted street, then he made a detour through the outskirts of the little village to reach, without being observed, the road to his father’s farm. The sound of an approaching wagon caused him to hide quickly behind a clump of wild blackberries; but when he saw the driver was not his persecutor he again took the road, muttering, as he plodded along,—
“Bloke isn’t half through with me yet: he said so himself. And he is only one of fifty or sixty men a good deal like him,—to say nothing of women! ‘My punishment is greater than I can bear.’ ”
Thanks to the charity of deep twilight, there was nothing unsightly about the familiar road, and as Phil neared the mass of shadow from which two lights gleamed just as they had done nightly ever since he had first approached his home after dark, his heart gave a mighty bound. Then his heart reproached him that he had thought so little about his mother during his absence that he had not brought her even the simplest present. He would write back to his father to get him something which he knew would please her; and in the mean time he would try to give her more love than ever before. If he could not have a certain new occupant for his heart, he would at least be as much as possible to those whom the Lord had given him.
Once within the gate, his better self took entire possession of him. Neither his mother nor his brothers should find him other than he had ever been,—affectionate, cheerful, and attentive. He stole softly to a window of the sitting-room, to see if the family were alone. He saw his two little brothers absorbed in a game of checkers. His mother sat by the table, reading a letter which Phil recognized by the hotel’s printed heading; it was his only letter home, written so many days ago that it must have been received long before that evening. Evidently she was re-reading it,—the dear soul!—as people will sometimes do with letters which contain too little, as well as those which are full.
Phil had to keep back some tears of remorse as he sprang upon the veranda and threw the door open. Down dropped the letter, over went the checker table and board, two chairs, and one small boy, and in a moment several country-people were as happy as if the sea had given up its dead or a long-time wanderer had returned. There are some glorious compensations for being simple-minded.
CHAPTER XV.
THE FATTED CALF,—BUT THE NEIGHBORS, TOO.
A thoughtful man once remarked that a special proof of divine wisdom was that the dear old story of the Prodigal Son did not reproduce any of the conversation of the neighbors with or regarding the naughty boy, for had this also been given as it really occurred, no subsequent penitent would ever have dared to follow the amateur swineherd’s example.