His brothers had all taken up other occupations in factory and shop, and Joshua Lane had expected that easy-going Lammy, the youngest by several years, would naturally drift along into farm work; but the boy had said, when his father had spoken upon the subject, “Farming is all right, only this one isn’t big enough for mo’n two, and I like to live in the country for pleasure; but for a trade I’m going into making somethin’ that bugs can’t eat, and that won’t get dried up, nor drowned out neither.” To Joshua this remark savoured of feeble-mindedness; but when he repeated it to Dr. Jedd, that keen-eyed person laughed, saying they need not worry about Lammy, for that some day he might surprise them all.
All through June he worked diligently at strawberry picking; then currants and raspberries followed in quick succession, so that it was nearly August, when, with twenty dollars to his credit in the Northboro Savings Bank, he took a vacation and went to his old haunts with the other boys.
Lammy had been bitterly disappointed when he found that Bird could not return to spend the Fourth of July, but he was not in the least daunted; for, after all, what was a whole summer even, when some day Bird would come back for good? The boy firmly believed that something would turn up to enable his father to buy the fruit farm, or if that was impossible, he would try to coax his father and mother to get her back without. There was always plenty to eat, and his home seemed so pleasant to him that he did not realize how hard his parents had to struggle to make both ends meet in the bad seasons when the bugs ate and the drought dried. He did not, of course, know of John O’More’s requirement that if Bird ever returned she must be legally adopted, and share and share alike with his brothers and himself; but if he had, it would have made no difference.
Lammy was very fond of prowling in the deep woods and along the river. He had intimate acquaintances among the gray squirrels, always knew where fox cubs could be found, and had once reared a litter of skunk pups under an abandoned barn. Their mother had evidently been trapped,—for he never saw her,—and he fed the young with milk and scraps, in the childish belief that they were some sort of half-wild kittens, and was very much disgusted, when they were old enough to follow him home, that his father declined to have them about, and that they disappeared the very same night.
But the river interested him the most, and he not only knew every swimming and pike hole, perch run and spawning shallow, along its ten-mile course from Northboro down to the Mill Farm at Milltown, and the windings of every trout brook that fed it, but he understood all that went on in the half dozen mills or shops along the route. He could explain exactly how the water was turned on and off and the gearing adjusted in the gristmill, the stamping and perforating done at the button factory, or the sand moulds prepared at the forge where scrap iron was turned into cheap ploughshares and other cast implements.
One very hot day the last part of July when Lammy, together with ’Ram Slocum and Bob Jedd, was going to the pet swimming-hole of the Laurelville boys, a clear pebble-lined pool with a shelving rock on one side that approached the water by easy steps, they heard voices in the woods and came suddenly upon a party of young fellows from the Engineers’ Summer School, which had its camp farther down the ridge of hills.
“Hullo!” shouted the foremost, addressing Lammy, who also chanced to be in the lead; “can you tell us if there is any decent place to swim hereabouts? The pond at the Mill Farm is posted ‘No Trespassing,’ most of the river bed is either too rocky or too shallow, and the only good place we’ve struck below here has a mud bottom, and looked too much like an eel hole to suit me.”
“Yes, ’tis an eel hole, this side of the course,” Lammy answered readily, “and t’other side there’s pickerel could bite yer toes if they was minded to. I’ll show yer a bully place. We’re going there now, and it isn’t much further up.”
“Charge him a quarter for the steer,” said ’Ram Slocum, in a loud whisper, kicking Lammy’s bare shins to stop him, for he had stepped forward eagerly to lead the way.
“Shan’t either,” Lammy replied spicily, to ’Ram’s astonishment; “water’s free up here, even if your pop won’t let us swim in the mill-pond, and does charge folks three cents a barrel for taking water when their wells are dry.”