But of the incident of the pearl ring, strangely enough, she said not a word.
* * *
When Thomas Perkins found out that Bud had really gone he was plunged in deepest grief. He came over to where John Watson was ploughing stubble, the very picture of self-pity. "Pretty hard on a man, John, pretty hard," he began as soon as he came within hearing distance, "to lose his only boy and have to hire help; after losin' the twins, too, the year of the frozen wheat—fine little fellows they was, too, supple as a string of suckers. And now, by golly, Bud's gone, John, with the good new eighteen-dollar suit—that's what I paid for it in cold cash in Brandon last winter—and I'll have to keep my hired man on if he don't come back, and this beggar I have, he can eat like a flock of grasshoppers—he just chunks the butter on his bread and makes syrup of his tea. Oh, yes, John, it's rough on a man when he begins to go down the other side of the hill and the bastin' threads are showin' in his hair. It's pretty hard to have to do with hired help. I understand now better'n ever why Billy Winter was cryin' so hard when his third wife died. Billy was whoopin' it up somethin' awful when Mr. Grantley went out to bury the woman, and Mr. Grantley said somethin' to comfort Billy about her bein' in a better place—that was a dead sure bet, anyway—but Billy went right on bawlin'—he didn't seem to take no notice of this better place idea—and after a while he says right out, says he: 'She could do more work than three hired girls, and she was the savin'est one I've had yet.'"
"Bud'll come back," said John Watson, soothingly. "The poor lad is feeling hurt about it—he don't like to have people thinkin' hard of him."
"Wasn't ten dollars a ter'ble fine, John, only eighteen?" Mr. Perkins said.
"It isn't the money I'm thinkin' of, it's feelin's; poor Bud, and him as honest a lad as ever drew breath." John Watson had a shrewd suspicion of who had "plugged" the grain.
"Well, I don't see why he need feel so bad," the other man said. "Nobody minds stealin' from the railways or the elevator men. They'd steal the coppers off a dead man's eyes—eh, what? But where Bud ever got such notions of honesty, I don't know—search me. It's a fine thing to be honest, but it's well to have it under control. Now, there's some kind of sharp tricks I don't hold with. They say that Mrs. George Steadman sold a seven-pound stone in the middle of a crock of butter to Mason here some years ago. She thought he'd ship it away to Winnipeg and nobody'd ever know; but as sure as you're born, when she got home she found it in the middle of her box of tea. He paid her twenty-five cents a pound for it, but, by golly! she paid him fifty cents a pound for it back. Now, I don't hold with that—it was too risky a deal for me. This Mason's a sharp one, I tell you—you'll get up early if you ever get ahead of him. In the airly days, when we all had to go on tick for everything we got at his store—they do say that every time one of us farmers went to town that Mason, as soon as he saw us, would say to his bookkeeper: 'Tom Perkins is in town; put him down for a dollar's worth of sugar and a quarter of chewin' tobacco.'"
Pearl came out with a pail to dig some potatoes in the garden.
"Well, my pretty dear," Mr. Perkins said amiably, "how are you feeling this evening?"
"I am real well, thank you," Pearl said, "and I hope you are, too."