Therefore she hurried her dressing and breakfast, and while dawn was still on the threshold, set off with Tony in the dust-covered 166 surrey that creaked its way along behind the stumbling gray mare.
The coolness of night was over the awakening earth, although the mounting sun was speedily drinking up the dew and rousing the locusts into droning song. Not a leaf stirred. Through the shimmering atmosphere the valley, with its river yellow as a band of molten gold, lay listless in drowsy haze; but the birds, butterflies, and bees flitted among the flowers that bordered the roadside with an alertness which proved that they, at least, felt no lessening of zest for their honey gathering.
“It’s goin’ to be an almighty hot day,” observed Tony who, after slapping Dolly’s broad back several times with the reins, had decided that further attempts to accelerate the mare’s pace was useless.
“Yes, very hot.”
“I hope your aunt won’t go pullin’ that separator all to pieces while we’re gone,” the boy grumbled. “In the first place she ain’t got a notion of how to put it together again; an’ in the next place she ain’t fit to go liftin’ an’ haulin’ things about the way she does. She’s gettin’ to be an old woman. Ain’t she most eighty?” 167
“She’s not far from it,” answered Lucy.
“Well, if I was her age an’ had her money, you wouldn’t see me workin’ as if a slave driver was standin’ over me,” the Portuguese lad declared. “What good is it doin’ her bein’ rich, I’d like to know.”
“Oh, I don’t think she is rich,” said Lucy quickly.
“Folks say she is; that’s all I know ’bout it,” replied Tony. “Elias Barnes was calculatin’ one day down to the store that she must be worth thousands. I can believe it, too,” added the boy significantly. “Everything we’ve got on the farm is tied up with string, or hitched together with a scrap of wire. Your aunt ain’t fur gettin’ a thing mended long’s it can be made to hold together. ’Bout everything on the farm wants overhaulin’. I’d give a fortune to see a smart man come in here an’ set the place to rights. There’s a lot of truck in the barn oughter be heaved out an’ burned. ’Tain’t fit for nothin’. But Miss Webster would no more hear to partin’ with one stick nor stone she owned than she’d cut off her head. She’d keep everything that belonged to her if it was dropping to bits.”