He was building a new house now, on a lot a little out of the town, and on the same street with Judge White. It was to be first-class in every respect, and people watched it as it progressed, and were glad for Tom Grey. He was a good fellow every way, and a good citizen, giving freely of his means and working for the public good, and they rejoiced in his good fortune, and made him one of the Village Board and School Board, and would have made him a vestryman if he had not declined that office, saying he was not worthy of it. That Judge White should be a little jealous of him was natural, but he was too proud to own it, and only shook his head ominously whenever he was mentioned.
“Let him run,” he would say to himself. “Yes, let him run. He will soon reach the end of his rope, if my surmises are correct. Then we’ll hear howling from those washerwomen who are putting their weeks’ earnings in his bank. Yes, let him run!”
CHAPTER II
HERBERT AND LOUIE
Four years passed, and the Grey Bank had not come to the end of its rope. Many besides Widow Brown and old maid Smith, and washerwomen generally, deposited in it, and Mr. Grey seemed to be increasing in wealth and prosperity.
The new house had long been finished and occupied, and was a model of simple elegance, outside and in. The Greys had good taste, and whatever they touched fell into the right place, and harmonized with whatever was nearest to it. Louie’s artistic eye detected an incongruity at once, and as she directed the most of her surroundings, people said of the grounds and the house that they were like pictures in which the outline and coloring were perfect, while Louie was the fairest picture of all.
She was nearly seventeen, with a face of rare beauty, especially her eyes, which Herbert White thought the handsomest he had ever seen. She did not climb fences or trees with him now. She was getting too old for that, but she went rowing with him on the river, after the white lilies, and took long rambles in the woods, searching for the early spring flowers, and later on for ferns and the red sumach berries. Sometimes she drove with him in the fancy turn-out which his father had given him on his birthday. But this did not occur often, for such drives were highly disapproved by Judge White, who read his son many a lecture on his bad taste in admiring a girl in Louie’s low estate.
“Good thunder, father,” Herbert said to him one morning when the lecture had been longer than usual, “isn’t Louie Grey as good as I am, if her father hasn’t quite as much money as you? He is a banker and a gentleman, and folks like him, and put him in office. Why, he is President of the village now, and—and—I never told you—but that time Mr. Smith, our church warden, died and we had to have a new one, they offered it to Mr. Grey, who refused it, just as he refused being vestryman, saying he was not good enough. So they took you, because you had a lot of money, I know; I heard about it. They said you were proud and overbearing, but on the whole a good man, and if Mr. Grey wouldn’t take it, there was no one else, so they elected you. I wanted to tell you then, but you seemed so pleased I didn’t.”
The judge was very pale by the time Herbert finished this statement, and for a church warden very angry, too. He didn’t swear, but he wanted to, and did say some things not very complimentary to the church generally and Mr. Grey in particular. He was proud of being church warden, and that Tom Grey should have been mentioned in preference to himself was galling to his pride, and increased his dislike for the man and everything pertaining to him, while Herbert was again told in strong terms to let the Grey girl alone.
“Nobody knows what her father was before he came here, or how he lived either. No business till he opened a bank, I’ve heard it hinted—but I ain’t going to slander anybody; this I’ll say, though, I don’t believe Tom Grey’s record is the cleanest that ever was. Needn’t tell me that one-horse bank of his can pay for the big swath he is cutting. Stands to reason he has some other way of getting money, and always has had. Time will tell. Warden of the church! I’d laugh. He had sense enough to decline, and I’ll resign, too, by the Lord Harry! Took me because I had money and there was nobody else! Yes, sir! I’ll resign, and let ’em have Tom Grey if they want him.”
The judge was very red in the face by the time he had finished this tirade, to which Herbert had listened impatiently. He had seen a plaid skirt and red waist down the street, and was anxious to get away; but his father was not yet through, and, after mopping his face and taking breath, he went on: