“Uncle,” he said in a low voice, glancing at the rest as they left their places at the table with a clatter of chairs on the kitchen floor, “uncle, can I see you alone for a moment?”
Mr. Percival patted him on the shoulder. “Better eat your breakfast, my boy, the first thing you do. I have some matters to look after in the barn and you can find me there, if you want to. You must forget about the accident yesterday,” he added kindly, seeing the boy’s pale face. “Pet’s all right now, and we sha’n’t let her fall in again, you may be sure.”
“I know, sir, but—”
Here aunt Puss bustled up with a plate of hot flapjacks, and uncle Will stepped aside with a laugh.
“Eat ’em while they’re hot, Tom,” said Ruel gravely, pausing a minute at the door, “or Mis’ Percival will have her feelin’s awfully hurt.”
So Tom was fain to put off his interview with his uncle, till some better season. Ah, Tom, if you had but spoken a moment earlier, or insisted one whit more strongly! But Mr. Percival went off where his duties called him, and Tom found no chance to see him alone that day, nor the next. Whatever the subject was, it did not seem to disturb him so much after a good breakfast; and he promised himself he would attend to it a little later.
The forenoon was spent quietly in the barn, in the capacious bays of which the mounds of fragrant hay had just been stored, still warm with the midsummer sunshine, and furnishing an occasional sleepy grasshopper, by no means startled out of his dignity by his sudden change of residence. The west wind blew softly in at the open doors, through which one could look, as one lay on the mow, into the sunny world outside, and catch a few bars of an oriole’s call, or of robin’s cheery note. The cattle were all out to pasture. Over the floor walked the hens, in serene meditation, placidly clucking, or uttering a remonstrative and warning “Wha-a-a-t!” as a swallow careened too near them in the bars of dusty sunlight. The only other noise was the occasional bird-twitter from one of the dozen or more nests upon the rafters overhead, and the tapping of bills on the floor as the sober fowls now and then gleaned a stray insect or bit of seed-food.
“I don’t see,” said Tom lazily, gazing up toward the ridge-pole, where a swallow was busily engaged in feeding her clamorous family, “I don’t see what people ever want to live in the city for!”
“If people could spend their time on hay-mows, half asleep, or—Ow!—tickling their sisters’ ears with straws!—”
“Well, that’s all girls do, anyway. A feller might just’s well stretch out here as curl up on a sofa and crochet all day!” Tom delivered this remark with emphasis, expressive of his manly disgust at all fancy-work in general, and “crochet” under which head he classed every home industry connected with worsted—in particular.