[CHAPTER XI.]
MR. ANTIS FORGETS THE BELL-ROPE.
WHEN Eben came back from seeing home his mother and the girls, and shut himself into his room, with no company but his lamp and his little stove, he did not find the solitude so pleasant. He could not but own that the voice of the water as it rushed and moaned and gurgled under the mill, and the sound of the wind around the corners of the large building, were rather airy and lonesome. The room itself was as bright and cheerful as possible, but he did not quite like to think that it was the only inhabited corner in the great rambling old building, where ever so many people might hide and never be found out.
"But this will never do!" said Eben, rousing himself from the mood that was stealing over him. "I shall be seeing robbers next. I am just as well off here as if I were at home, and I am not going to be afraid, now that I have undertaken the job. So come down here, old Carpenter, and let's have a grind at you before bed-time, if you have no objection."
Old Carpenter made no objection, and by the time Eben had mastered the subject of insect respiration his fancies had vanished, and his dreams that night were haunted by nothing worse than the persuasion that he was obliged to breathe through holes in his sides, like a caterpillar, and found himself sadly embarrassed by his clothes. After a few nights, he grew accustomed to his solitude, and liked it, and he never had a thought of being afraid.
"So, Fairchild, you have fitted up a very snug place here?" said Mr. Francis, surveying Eben's room with approbation on the occasion of his first visit. "The old books look very well. I had no notion there were so many. Where is the first volume of that set of Hume?"
"I took it home to read aloud to my mother and the girls," replied Eben. "I will be very careful of it."
"Very good, very good!" said the old gentleman. "So you spend your evenings at home? Very right! Always a very good sign to see a young man attentive to his mother and sisters. But I thought you had only one sister?"
"Mary Clarke boards at our house this winter," said Eben, blushing a little, he hardly knew why.
"Oh ho!" said the old gentleman, smiling. "So she's 'the girls,' is she? And I suppose she's a very nice girl—all the same as your sister, eh? Very good! I am pleased with you, Fairchild. You seem to be doing well in every respect, and I am much pleased with you. I have suggested to Mr. Antis that the rope from the mill bell be carried into this room, so that you can reach it in a moment if anything happens. Yes, yes, I am pleased with you, and especially that you are so dutiful to your mother. Very nice thing to have girls at home to read to, eh?"