At all events, it was only for a moment or two and then she and her brother were in each other’s arms. There is no authentic account of what happened then, for the three visitors, being good scouts, strolled to the hedge which bordered the lawn and looked at the scenery beyond. It must have been beautiful scenery and very affecting, for Pee-wee’s eyes were brimming, and Tom’s and Roy’s were not exactly what you would call dry....
RUTH AND HARRY WERE IN EACH OTHERS’ ARMS.
CHAPTER XIII
AT THE STANTONS’
The return of Harry Stanton to his home was a nine days’ wonder in the village. Poor Mrs. Stanton seemed almost unable to comprehend the wonderful reality of his actual presence and she kept him by her constantly, even to the point of accompanying him back and forth from the river. The boys noted these affectionate attentions with dismay, for they wished to make a cruise in the beautiful boat, with its proud owner as their companion.
“You leave it to me,” said Pee-wee. “I know how to handle mothers; we’ve got to wait for the something or otherological moment.”
The days which followed were days of stress but of happiness to all concerned. Mr. Stanton lost no time in going to Poughkeepsie where he got all the information that could be obtained from Mr. Waring’s executor and friends as to how the eccentric but kindly old gentleman came into possession of the so-called nephew on whom he had showered wealth and sympathetic attention.
Because he had been eccentric, his intimates knew but little of his affairs, but the facts, as Mr. Stanton was able to piece them together, were that Mr. Waring had lost his wife and only son and that he had never been the same afterward. He lived the life of a recluse in his lonely, luxurious home. Two years before he had started up the Hudson in his beautiful boat, accompanied by a valet and a man to run the craft, intending to visit some remote spot where he had enjoyed the trout fishing in his early years.
All that his business friends knew in addition to this was that he had returned almost immediately, bringing with him an apparently weak-minded boy whom he called his nephew and whose self-appointed guardian and benefactor he became.
Mr. Stanton tried to find the two men who had accompanied their employer on that mysterious cruise. The valet had died, but he located the other man working in a munitions plant not far from Poughkeepsie. From this man, who spoke only broken English, he learned something of his son’s rescue.