Phil took off his hat, rubbed his eyes, looked away in the direction of the ditch-extension, and made a face at the faithful old spade.
“I s’pose you’d better be thinkin’ about gettin’ off at once,” said his mother.
“Father’s will is law,” said Phil, in the calmest tone he could command. “Do you think the boys and Carlo can help you take care of the place for a few days?”
“To be sure,” said his mother, “an’ a powerful sight o’ days besides, if it’s goin’ to save your father from drudgin’ away the rest of his days. An’ I ain’t above sayin’ that I’d stand a good deal of loneliness if I thought ’twould end in my stoppin’ trottin’ around in a pint-pot day in an’ day out. An’ you,” said the old lady, looking at her son, “I want to see the time come when I can take them old boots out to a brush-heap and burn ’em out o’ sight an’ knowledge. But what does your father mean about that gal not bein’ engaged? Is it that Tramlay gal?”
“I suppose so,” said Phil, carelessly, though his manner was the result of prodigious effort. “When he found me he asked me about her, along with the other folks, and I told him, just as I’d heard, that she was engaged to be married. Father must have been asking some pointed questions about her. It does beat everything, the interest that old men sometimes take in young women who aren’t kith nor kin to them, doesn’t it? I guess it’s about as well that I’m going back, if only to keep the old gentleman’s country curiosity within proper bounds. Don’t you think so?”
“She ain’t engaged,” said Mrs. Hayn, ignoring her son’s explanation and his attempt at joking. “She ain’t engaged,” the old lady repeated; “so you—”
The sentence was not completed, but Phil’s face flushed as he looked down at his muddy boots. For the first time since his return he had heard an allusion to Lucia which did not make him uncomfortable.
Within two hours Haynton was shaken from centre—the railway-station—to circumference by the announcement that Phil Hayn, in his store-clothes, had bought a ticket for New York and was already well on his journey. Meanwhile, at Hayn Farm an old woman as deeply interested as any one in the business and other possibilities that had been foreshadowed was doing all in her power to further them: she was spending the afternoon on her knees at her bedside.
CHAPTER XVII.
FATHER AND SON.
Youth has some advantages peculiarly its own in the general battle for fame and fortune and in capacity for enjoyment, but for discovering all that may be pleasing in whatever is nearest at hand it is left far behind by age. The school-girl does not care for dainty flavors unless they have candy for a basis; her mother, with a palate which has been in training for half a century, will get truer enjoyment out of a neighbor’s loaf of home-made cake than the girl can find in a shop-full of bonbons. A boy will ramble through an orchard in search of the tree which is fullest and has the largest fruit; his father, in late autumn, will find higher flavor, and more of it, in the late windfalls which his stick discovers among the dead leaves.