Mr. and Mrs. Denville were standing talking to a tall, burly man in big top boots, homespun clothes, and a soft felt hat.
Mr. Denville called him Mr. Gleason, and I found that he was the farmer who had bought the old Denville homestead. I liked his face—it was so humorous. Sometimes his mouth stopped smiling, but his eyes never stopped. They were twinkling all the time, whether he was talking or keeping still.
He was a very big man, and he stood looking about at us all without a word, but with his eyes just dancing.
“Now,” said Mr. Denville at last, in his business-like way, “we are ready to start, Mr. Gleason.”
The farmer pulled himself together, laughed “Ho! ho!” in a jolly voice, just as if Mr. Denville had made some good joke, then led the way to the back of the station house. There was a good-sized, double-seated carriage there, with a canopy top, and near it stood a large express wagon.
“Ho! ho! ho!” laughed the farmer again, as he gazed round on us all—Mr. and Mrs. Denville, Mary as she held me in her arms, Anthony, Mona, Slyboots and Serena in their boxes, nurse Hannah, and the big cage of canaries, and the heap of trunks—“Ho! ho! I guess I'll have to lay in some more cornmeal, and put another house on the top of the one I've got.”
While the farmer stood laughing to himself, Mr. Denville calmly put his wife, Mary and me in the back seat of the carriage, and got in the front seat himself.
Seeing this, the farmer stopped chuckling, and going up to the horses' heads, unfastened the rope that tied them.
“Denno,” he said to the slight young man who had taken me from the train, “pack all you can in the express wagon, and make after me. Come back for what you have to leave.”
Mary held me tightly in her lap, and I gazed curiously about me as the farmer got into the carriage, picked up the reins, and started away from the station. A number of little boys were on the ground staring up at me, but I did not pay much attention to them. I had seen boys before, and at present I was more interested in lovely Maine.