"You should buy the cattle, too," whispered Nick. "There be folk in Johnstown would pay well for such a breed o' cow. And there's the pig, Jack, and the sheep and the hens, and all that grain and hay so snug in the barn."
So I asked very fiercely if any man desired to bid against me; and neither Huetson nor his sulky comrade, Davis, having any such stomach, I fetched ale and apples and nuts and made them eat and drink, and so drew aside the Commissioner and bargained with him like a Jew or a shoe-peg Yankee; and in the end bought all.[21]
"Shall you move hither from Fonda's Bush and sell your house?" asked Nick, who now was going out on watch.
But I made him no answer, for I had been bitten by an idea, the mere thought of which fevered me with excitement. Oh, I was mad as a March fox running his first vixen, in that first tide of romantic love,—clean daft and lacking reason.
So when Commissioner Outthout and those who had come for the vendue had drank as much of my new ale as they cared to carry home a-horse, and were gone a-bumping down the Johnstown road like a flock of Gilpins all, I took my parchment and went into my bed chamber; and there I sat upon my trundle bed and read what was writ upon my deed, making me the owner of Summer House and of all that appertained to the little hunting lodge.
But I had not purchased it selfishly; and the whole business began with an impulse born of love for Sir William, who had loved this place so well. But even as that impulse came, another notion took shape in my love-addled sconce.
I sat on my trundle bed a-thinking and—God forgive me—admiring my own lofty and romantic purpose.
The house was still, but on the veranda roof overhead I could hear the moccasined tread of Nick pacing his post; and from below in the kitchen came the distant thump and splash of Penelope's churn, where she was making new butter for to salt it against our needs.
Now, as I rose my breath came quicker, but admiration for my resolve abated nothing—no!—rather increased as I tasted the sad pleasures of martyrdom and of noble renunciation. For I now meant to figure in this girl's eyes in a manner which she never could forget and which, I trusted, might sadden her with a wistful melancholy after I was gone and she had awakened to the irreparable loss.