The young man comprehended in part only, the reason of his mother's extreme bitterness towards Almeda Champney. His uncle had loved him; had kept him with him much of the time, encouraging him in his boyish aims and ambitions which his mother fostered—and Louis Champney was childless, the last in direct descent of a long line of fine ancestors—.
Here his thought was checked; those ancestors were his, only in a generation far removed; the Champney blood was in his mother's veins. But his father was Almeda Champney's only brother—why then, should not his mother count on the estate being his in the end? He knew this to have been her hope, although she had never expressed it. He had gained an indefinite knowledge of it through old Joel Quimber and Elmer Wiggins and Mrs. Milton Caukins, a distant relative of his father's. To be sure, Louis Champney might have left him his hunting-piece, which as a boy he had coveted, just for the sake of his name—
He stopped short in his speculations for he heard voices in the lane. The cows were entering it and coming up to the milking shed. The lane led up from the low-lying lake meadows, knee deep with timothy and clover, and was fenced on both sides from the apple orchards which arched and overshadowed its entire length. The sturdy over-reaching boughs hung heavy with myriads of green balls. Now and then one dropped noiselessly on the thick turf in the lane, and a noble Holstein mother, ebony banded with ivory white, her swollen cream-colored bag and dark-blotched teats flushed through and through by the delicate rose of a perfectly healthy skin, lowered her meek head and, snuffing largely, caught sideways as she passed at the enticing green round.
At the end of this lane there swung into view a tall loose-jointed figure which the low strong July sunshine threw into bold relief. It was Romanzo Caukins, one of the Colonel's numerous family, a boy of sixteen who had been bound out recently to the mistress of Champ-au-Haut upon agreement of bed, board, clothes, three terms of "schooling" yearly, and the addition of thirty dollars to be paid annually to the Colonel.
The payment of this amount, by express stipulation, was to be made at the end of each year until Romanzo should come into his majority. By this arrangement, Mrs. Champney assured to herself the interest on the aforesaid thirty dollars, and congratulated herself on the fact that such increment might be credited to Milton Caukins as a minus quantity.
Champney leaped the bars and went down the lane to meet him.
"Hello, Roman, how are you?"
The boy's honest blue eyes, that seemed always to be looking forward in a chronic state of expectancy for the unexpected, beamed with goodness and goodwill. He wiped his hands on his overalls and clasped Champney's.
"Hullo, Champ, when'd you come?"
"Only yesterday. I didn't see you about when I was here in the afternoon. How do you like your job?"