“Of course not, why should they?” replied Nellis.
“You didn’t remember that it was circus day, did you, and I guess it is the first time you ever forgot it,” said Mrs. Lane to Lammy.
“I knew—all right, but I’m savin’ up for—you know,” replied Lammy, wriggling out of his chair and going to the door where he began crumbing bread and throwing it to some little chickens that had strayed up out of bounds.
“I do wish you had mentioned it, anyhow; it would hev done us all good to have a change, though to be sure I do suppose some folks would have turned our going into disrespect to Aunt Jimmy,—Mis’ Slocum in particular.”
“She went, and Ram, and Mr. Slocum, though he came home early. I saw him down in the turnpike store back of the schoolhouse this noon; he was sayin’ he’d had to come back early on account of havin’ a lot of things to attend to over at the Mill Farm this afternoon,” said Lammy.
“The turnpike store? He doesn’t trade there—it’s a mile out of his way,” said Mrs. Lane, thoughtfully.
“He didn’t get to the Mill Farm, anyway,” said Nellis, “because I was there from after dinner until I came home just now. Where was I? You got me all off the track.”
“You were sayin’ that Mr. Clarke asked you all sorts of questions about the mill stream,” said Mrs. Lane, who now seemed to have lost interest in Nellis’s story.
“Oh, yes,—well, Mr. Clarke and that Mr. Brotherton,—that is superintendent of the engine shop in Northboro,—poked about a lot together, measuring things and figuring in a little book he had in his pocket. It looked as if they were going to make an afternoon of it, and as I saw a fishin’ pole inside one of the open sheds, I thought I’d go down the sluice way and try for a mess of perch. I was lyin’ quiet out along a willow stump, thinkin’ the folks were in the mill, when I heard voices on the dam above. Mr. Clarke said: ‘I tell you what, Brotherton, I want you to negotiate this affair for me. That Slocum is a tricky fellow. I saw him a month ago and told him I’d not touch the property until that snarl about the mortgage foreclosure was untangled, the price he asked was outrageous for two hundred acres, of course the buildings are only fit for kindling. Now I want you to either buy me the farm and water right, or else lease it for say twenty years; then I will run a spur of the Northboro Valley railroad down here, move the locomotive works and the paper-mill, and enlarge both plants. This is the right place; plenty of room to build houses for the hands, and close enough to my place to be under my eye without being annoying.
“‘It will suit my daughter Marion, too. She has all sorts of ideas about building a model village. Of course this is between ourselves, for if that old Slocum rat dreamed that I was behind you, he would ask a dollar a blade for every spear of run-out wire-grass on the farm.’”