“Rats don’t step like a grown man in his stocking-feet, nor make the rafters creak, either.”
Madam Bushnell appeared to be investigating the contents of the pot hanging on the crane, and perhaps the heat of the blazing wood was sufficient 77 to account for the burning of her cheeks. She cooled them a moment later by going down cellar after cider, a mug of which she offered to her husband, proposing the while that he should have his chair out of doors, and sit under the sycamore tree by the river-bank. When he assented, and she had seen him safely in the chair, she made haste to David’s bed-room.
Since Mr. Bushnell’s illness began, no one had ascended to the chamber except herself and her son.
On two shelves hanging against the wall were the books that he had brought home with him from Yale College, just four weeks ago.
A table was drawn near to the one window in the room. On it were bits of wood, with iron scraps, fragments of glass and copper. In fact, the same thing to-day would suggest boat-building to the mother of any lad finding them among her boy’s playthings. To this mother they suggested nothing beyond the fact that David was engaged in something which he wished to keep a profound secret.
He had not told her so. It had not been necessary. She had divined it and kept silence, having all a mother’s confidence in, and hope of, her son’s success in life.
As she surveyed the place, she thought:
“There is nothing here, even if he (meaning her husband) should take it into his head to come up and look about.”
Meanwhile young David had crossed the Pochaug River, and was half the way to Pautapoug.