“His mother? His mother is dead?” asked the Don, in a low tone, and without raising his eyes from the floor.
“Yes. They say she was a lovely woman.”
“And she is dead, you say—your friend’s mother?” he repeated, in a mechanical sort of way; and, resting his head upon his hand, he fixed his eyes upon the window with a look so grim that I paused in my narrative.
“Yes,” I presently resumed, “she—Charley’s mother; that is—”
“I beg pardon,” said he, abruptly turning to me, and, as the Latin hath it, serening his face with an effort,—“please go on.”
“Well, Charley was at the University at the time of his mother’s death; and during the following vacation he seemed to find his own desolate home—he was singularly devoted to his mother—unendurable; so he would frequently drop in on my grandfather and myself at tea, walking home, when bedtime came, across the fields; but my grandfather, remarking the sad look that always came into his face when he arose to depart, would frequently insist upon his spending the night with us. The poor fellow could scarcely ever resist the temptation, to my great delight; for to me, a boy of thirteen, Charley, who was eighteen, and a student, was a sort of demi-god. I suppose, in fact, that apart from my grandfather’s personal liking for the young man, and his sympathy with him under the circumstances, he was very glad to give me the society of some one younger than himself. And so, to make a long story short, Charley’s visits becoming more and more frequent and regular, it came at last to be understood that he was to spend every night with us,—during his vacation, of course. At last, at the end of three years, Charley left the University with the degree of Master of Arts in pocket.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes. You are surprised, no doubt. He is so unassuming, one would hardly suppose that he had attained an honor which is reached by hardly more than one out of every hundred of the students at the University. To continue. When he returned from college and took charge of his farm, it soon appeared that the tables were turned. It was Charley’s companionship now that had grown to be a necessity to the old gentleman. ‘We shall expect you to dinner,’ he would say every morning, as Charley rode off to look after his farming operations. Charley often protested against this one-sided hospitality, and, as a compromise, we would dine with him occasionally; but at last my grandfather proposed a consolidation of the two households, all of us wondering why the plan had not been thought of before. That is the way Charley came to live at Elmington. The two farms are separate, though from time to time worked in common, as occasion demands,—in harvest-time, for example. Each farm contributes its quota to the table, though not in any fixed ratio. My grandfather, for example, is firmly persuaded that the grass on his farm—notably in one special field—imparts, in some occult way, a flavor to his mutton that Charley’s does not possess; while, on the other hand, an old woman on Charley’s place has such a gift at raising chickens, turkeys, and ducks, that we have gotten in the habit of looking to her for our fowls.”
The Don smiled.
“It is rather a singular arrangement, isn’t it? but I have gone into these details that you might see that Elmington is, for all the purposes of hospitality, as much Charley’s as my grandfather’s. I hope it will not be long,” I added, rising, “before you will be able to go down and see how the arrangement works, though I am sorry I shall not be able to join you till Christmas week, being detained by professional engagements, or, rather, the hope of such, as I have but recently opened a law office.”