Courteous to his equals, but proud and haughty to his inferiors, with an implicit belief in the Thorntons and no belief at all in such people as the Leaches, or indeed in many of the citizens of Rocky Point, where he owned, or held mortgages on, half the smaller premises. The world was made for him, and he was Giles Thornton, of English extraction on his father’s side and Southern blood on his mother’s, and in his pride and pomposity he went on past the old red farm house, while Mildred sat for a moment looking after the carriage and envying its occupants.
“Oh, if I were rich, like Mrs. Thornton, and could wear silks and jewels; and I will, some day,” she said, with a far-off look in her eyes, as if she were seeing the future and what it held for her. “Yes, I will be rich, no matter what it costs,” she continued, “and people shall envy me, and I’ll make father and mother so happy? and you, Charlie”——
Here she stopped, and parting the curls from her baby brother’s brow, looked earnestly into his blue eyes; then went on, “you shall have a golden crown, and you, Bessie darling, shall have,—shall have,—Gerard Thornton himself, if you want him.”
“And I lame Alice?” asked a cheery voice, as there bounded into the kitchen a ten year old lad, who, with his naked feet, sunny face and torn straw hat, might have stood for Whittier’s barefoot boy.
“Oh, Tom,” Mildred cried, “I’m glad you’ve come. Won’t you pick up the pods while I get the peas into the pot? It’s almost noon, and I’ve got the table to set.”
Before Tom could reply, another voice called out, “You have given Gerard to Bessie and Alice to Tom; now what am I to have, Miss Prophetess?”
The speaker was a fair-haired youth of seventeen, with a slight Scotch accent and a frank, open, genial face, such as strangers always trust. He had stopped a moment at the corner of the house to pick a rose for Mildred, and hearing her prophecies, sauntered leisurely to the doorstep, where he sat down, and fanning himself with his big hat, asked what she had for him.
“Nothing, Hugh McGregor,” Mildred replied, with a little flush on her cheek. “Nothing but that;” and she tossed him a pea-pod she had picked from the floor.
“Thanks,” Hugh said, catching the pod in his hand. “There are two peas in it yet, a big and a little one. I am the big, you are the little, and I’m going to keep them and see which hardens first, you or I.”
“What a fool you are,” Mildred said, with increased color on her cheek, while Hugh pocketed the pod and went on: “A crown for Charlie, Gerard for Bessie, Allie for Tom, a pea-pod for me, and what for you, my darling?”