By the time they reached the Lane farmhouse Bird was quiet again, though her eyes drooped with sleep, and Lammy was telling eagerly how next autumn they could perhaps go over to Northboro to school, for drawing was taught there, and, he confided to Bird what had never before taken the form of words, that he too longed to learn to draw, not flowers, but machinery and engines, such as pulled the trains over at the Centre.
As they came in sight of the house Lammy noticed that there was a strange team at the gate, a buggy from the livery-stable at the Centre, for quiet Lammy kept his eyes open, and knew almost every horse in the county. On the stoop a short, thick-set man, with a fat, clean-shaven face, and clad in smart black clothes, stood talking to Lammy’s father.
Both men glanced up the road from time to time, and then Lammy noticed that the stranger held his watch in his hand, and he kept fidgeting and looking at it as if in a great hurry.
As the children entered the gate they heard Mr. Lane say, “Here she is now, but you can’t catch that evenin’ train from the Centre; you’ll have to put over here until morning.”
Bird gave a gasp and instinctively clutched Lammy’s hand. Could this be some one from her uncle? Of course it was not he himself, for her father had been youngish, tall and slight, with fair hair, small feet and hands, while this man was all of fifty, and had a rough and common look in spite of his clothes that did not match his heavy boots and clumsy grimy hands.
For a moment Bird forgot the story of her father’s boyhood that he had so often told her, forgot that fifteen years and a different mother separated him from his half-brothers, and when Mr. Lane called her, as she tried to slip in at the side door after Lammy, saying, “Come here, Bird, this is your Uncle John O’More come from New York,” she could only keep from falling by an effort, and stood still, nervously twisting her hands in the skirt of her black frock without being able to speak a word, while Twinkle seated himself at her feet looking anxiously, first at the stranger, then at Mr. Lane, with his head cocked on one side.
[II]
HER UNCLE JOHN
“Got a start? Didn’t expect to see me here, did you? else maybe you never knew you had an Uncle John,” said the stranger, by way of greeting, taking Bird roughly, but not unkindly, by the shoulders and looking her full in the face. Then, noticing how pale she was and that her eyes were red with crying, he let her go with a pat of his heavy hand that shook her through and through, saying, half to her and half to Mr. Lane, “Go along in now and get your supper. You look done up, and I wouldn’t object to a bite myself since I’ve got to hang around over night; been chasing round after you since morning, and those sandwiches I got at that tumble-down ranch at what they call the Centre were made up of last year’s mule-heel. They ain’t gone further’n here yet,” he added, striking his chest that was covered by a showy scarf, emphatically.