"I suppose it"s the usual raid upon the commissary," he answered.
Allison mounted heavily to the verandah.
"Right!" he exclaimed. "Right! You"ll notice that Barbara has already gone on ahead. She"s the skirmish line--scouts--videttes--whatever you please to call "em. There"s no-one up yet--none of the family--over to our place. We are hungry, Cal. I hope this is waffle morning?"
Caleb smiled at him, less impersonality in the mirth. It was a regular custom, this truancy of Barbara Allison and her father--one of the little human foibles which Caleb often told himself accounted, in part at least, for his real liking of the man.
"Waffles it is," he said, and he turned toward the boy.
"Would you mind finding Miss Sarah, Steve?" he asked. "Will you tell her, please, that we are to be subjected to another neighborly imposition?"
After the boy had disappeared Caleb followed the larger man to a chair.
And this time it was Caleb who met Allison"s silence with a challenging, "Well?"
"Where did you get him, Cal?" Allison demanded. "Where _did_ you get him? Those shoes, and those trousers--pants, I guess is the word, eh?
And say, how that little beggar did squeeze my hand! Look here!"
He held one soft hand up for inspection. There were faint red welts still visible across the finger joints.
"Friend of yours, did you say?"
Without stopping to think about it, Caleb was not so keen to enlarge upon the boy"s obvious "points" as he had been with Sarah. He omitted to mention his thoughts of the night before, and he omitted any reference to Old Tom, except for the most hazy explanation that the boy had no immediate kin. But with an increasing eagerness he dilated upon the small foot traveler"s first view of the "city," his breathless reception of Allison"s own switch engine, and his avowed intention to "look around a trifle," before he located something to do.
"I thought I"d take him down this morning and get McLean to give him a ride in the cab of one of those sheet-iron steam relics of yours," he finished.
If Caleb had expected his unadorned recitation of the boy"s appearance to make any impression upon his hearer he would have been disappointed.
But, without any confessed reason for so doing, Caleb had aimed rather at the opposite effect. And Allison turned from it with a large, matter-of-fact indifference, to rise and bow to Sarah Hunter, who appeared that moment in the doorway.
"Surely--surely," he echoed Caleb"s suggestion. "Take him down and give him a ride! McLean"ll be glad of the chance to show someone his pet buzz-saws and things. I"ll walk down with you, myself, after breakfast. I may be away for a day or two, and I want to leave directions for changes to be incorporated while I"m gone."
At the table that morning Caleb noted that there was no hesitation in Steve"s selection from the silver beside his plate, no waiting to follow in the lead of Sarah Hunter"s choice. He noticed, too, that the boy"s eyes did not once lift to those of Barbara Allison, opposite him.
And while the little girl from time to time joined in the conversation, he not once opened his mouth to speak, until they were almost ready to rise from their places.
Allison had been growling genially at the lack of water and the prolonged drouth which was burning the pasturage to a crisp and juiceless brown.
"If that everlasting sun would only stop shining for a while," he said, "if it"d only rain a bit, I"d like to take a trip back north, a-fishing, before it gets too late in the season."
"You mean you"d like a fishing trip as an excuse to go back north, don"t you, Dexter?" Caleb badgered him.
Allison was smiling blandly, for Caleb"s joke over his round-about methods was an old, old joke, when Stephen O"Mara spoke.
"It"s goin" to rain," said the boy.
Allison turned toward him, his eyes again quizzical.
"I suppose so," he admitted. "In the general course of things it"ll come, no doubt, but----"
The boy interrupted him, shaking his head.
"It"s goin" to come before mornin"," he stated inflectionlessly, "and it"s comin" to stay fer a spell, too!"
And Allison did not try to hide his broad grin of amus.e.m.e.nt.
"You think so, do you, sonny?" he dismissed the matter not unkindly.
"Well, at that, your guess when it comes to the weather, is about as good as the next man"s."
Once more the boy shook his head.
"I ain"t guessin"," he finished unabashed. "Ner I ain"t thinkin" it will. It"ll jest be rainin", come sun-up, and it"ll be good for "til Wednesday, fer sure!"
Caleb, watching the boy"s face, was on the point of offering to wager two bits with Allison that the prophecy held good, but Sarah"s well-known att.i.tude toward the vice of gambling checked him in the rash offer. Besides, he wondered how he could make sound anything but foolish an offer to back the certainty of a weather forecast which was based upon nothing but the una.s.suming and quiet finality of the prophet.
Barbara Allison insisted upon joining the excursion down to the mill that morning; she developed a sudden and unshakable resolve to be one of the party, and after his remonstrances had finally brought stormy tears to her eyes, Allison surrendered in perplexity to her whim.
"All right, then," he gave in. "If you want to come as much as all that, but--but you--now run along, then, with Stephen."
On the way down the hill he voiced his perplexity to Caleb.
"When it comes to dealing with men," he said, "I pride myself upon being able to go back, rather incisively, to first motives. But the other s.e.x is beyond me! She"s always turned up her dainty nose at the noise and dirt before, and--and now she"s ready to cry because I suggest that she wait with Miss Sarah until we return!"
Caleb"s eyes rested upon the oddly matched little couple ahead in the road. The boy was carrying his battered hat in his hand, but Barbara walked with small head up, without a single glance for her escort.
Caleb, noting that Steve"s head was forward-thrust, knew that his eyes must be fastened hungrily upon the town in the valley; and he understood the reason for the disdainful tilt of the little girl"s chin. For even at the age of ten Barbara Allison was not accustomed to inattention. Caleb smiled, rather covertly for him.
"I never knew but one woman whose motives were absolutely transparent,"
he mused. "And she--she was the most uninteresting, unsuccessful female person I ever did know."
As Allison had promised they found McLean, the white-haired mill superintendent, only too eager at the prospect of an audience for one of his voluble tours of the premises. But when Caleb had explained the main errand upon which they had come, after a long, keen scrutiny of the boy"s face, the burly river-man led the way, without a word, to a wheezing old two-wheeler in the piling yard.
"So you"ll be wantin" to take a spin in one av me ingines, is it?" he asked then. And, after a moment: "An" do you think you"ll be able to hang on, whin she gets to r-rollin"?"
Steve"s eyes were like bits of polished steel, so bright they were. It was a struggle for him to take them, even for a moment, from the engine before him.
"I cal"late I kin," he quavered.
"Well, thin, we"ll see." McLean looked up and winked at the engineer in the diminutive cab. "It"s car-reful you"ll be, Misther engineer,"
he cautioned, "an" watch your steerin" on the cur-rves!"
He leaned over to lift the boy to the running-board, but Steve, with one foot upraised, hung back. He faced toward Caleb and, without a glance in the girl"s direction, said:
"Mebby she--mebby she"d like to go, too?"
Barbara Allison, chin lifted a little higher, half wheeled and slipped her hand within that of her father.
"Thank you, but I don"t care to," she refused.
Steve caught the little toss of her head from the corner of his eye, and his face went pink. Without another word he clambered up beside the driver and the engine rolled out of the yard and went clanking down the uneven, crooked track, leaving a dissolving trail of steam behind.
When it returned the little face at the cab window was tense and somewhat pale beneath its tan, but the hand upon the throttle beside the engineer"s lay steady as a little pine knot.
"Well, an" what do you think av her?" McLean demanded with an a.s.sumption of anxiety as the boy dropped to the ground.