Jane Gower was knitting fiercely in outlet for her emotion, but now her needles were charmed into immobility. “The police,” she muttered; “my goodness, we might get our money back!”
“And whack the pair of them into jail!” said Esther.
All looked at Roger Gower. His spectacles were pushed back on his bald forehead. His wide blue eyes were fixed on the ceiling. He ignored his family for a space, then his voice came ponderously through his beard:—
“No, I’ll not do that. They’ll not go to jail because of me.”
“But the money, Pa!”
“And how mean old Page was about the boundary!”
“Laura Page has had three dresses to our one.”
“And now we’re paying for her honeymoon!”
“Honeymoon with a hired man!” gasped Beaty. “She always acted as though no one was good enough for her.”
Luke’s attentions to Laura had been nipped in the bud. He was embarrassed. He said, reddening a little:—
“But surely you’ll have Searle arrested.”
Roger Gower was immovable. Something in him rejected the idea of setting the law after his neighbor’s daughter’s lover, even though the neighbor was an enemy.
It seemed to Shaw that the talk about the stolen money and the elopement would never end. He had an oppressive sense of guilt. He remembered how he had gone to the dairy and left Searle alone in the sitting room. It was then that Searle had gone through the drawers of the chest and taken his grandfather’s money. Shaw remembered the handsome little Jersey and her calf, the satisfaction at the price they had brought. If his grandparents knew how he had been thick with Searle he was sure he would get the worst punishment any boy had ever had.
Yet almost as strong as his sense of guilt was his curiosity about Searle and the girl he had run away with. Why did they do it? Where were they now?
According to Mr. Blair they were bound straight for hell. He came to tea one day and, as the Pages were not members of his congregation, he was free to say exactly what he thought of the elopers. The Gowers wondered what he would have said if he had known of the stolen money. It was a bitter thing to Jane and her daughters when Roger forbade them to speak of the theft outside the family circle.
For many nights Shaw tossed on his bed, sleeping only in snatches because of his guilty connection with Searle. If he had not made friends with him on the sly, Searle would never have thought of coming to the house. Had he come with the idea of stealing in his mind or had he been tempted when he was left alone with the chest of drawers? Shaw brooded on the hired man and Laura. Why had she run away with him—left her mother, who had called her “the ewe lamb,” to go off with a stranger? What were they doing now? Shaw’s share in the affair set him still more apart from the family. He was glad when school opened.
He began the term with the fixed resolution to pass into the class above him at Christmas, to pass to the next one at Easter, to achieve the entrance to the high school that summer. Miss McKay saw the resolution in his face and felt sorry for him because she was certain that he could not do it. No child could.
Yet, as the weeks went on, she began to wonder if after all it might be possible. It was amazing how Shaw stored away knowledge. He came to school each morning with the last line of his homework done, word-perfect in what was to be memorized. She could not decide whether he was abnormally receptive or was really working far too hard. There was no color in his face. There were blue shadows beneath his eyes. But he was active physically and at the recess she saw him running and scuffling with the other boys, apparently as strong as any of them. He was growing fast.
It was disconcerting to Miss McKay to find his eyes fixed on her face when she was teaching a senior class. She wondered if, with the crude curiosity of childhood, he was staring at her latest disfigurement. She would lay one of her lovely hands over the spot and return his stare with severity. Then he would smile a little and drop his eyes to his book. But soon she would catch him staring again.
One day she swooped down on him. He was hiding something on his desk, holding his hands over it.
“Let me see what you have, Shaw!”
“I don’t want to, Miss McKay.”
“You must.”
She raised his hands and saw the exercise for the senior class written out carefully. He had been making corrections in it from the lesson in progress. Her eyes filled with tears. She had been teaching for fifteen years and such a thing had never happened to her before.
After that she opened the fount of her learning to him, let him pick up all he could from the other classes. She even began to include him in her teaching of them, for his serious stare fascinated her.
His tenth birthday came and a parcel addressed to him from his mother. He had never before had a parcel of his own and an unaccustomed color warmed his cheeks as he tugged with trembling fingers at the string.
“Here, let me do it!” said Jane Gower, her bony fingers eager above the knot.
“No! I want to! Please!”
The four women stood watching while he undid the parcel.
It was a new suit of navy-blue serge and two pair of long black stockings knitted by his mother. A letter from her was pinned with a black pin to the stockings.
“Well, I call that a fine present,” said his grandmother. “And a good piece of serge. Cristabel must have paid a good deal for that.”
“It’s about time he had it,” said Letitia. “He looks awful in his old one.”
“Look at his wrists! They’re sticking out half a mile!” And Beaty began to laugh.
“This suit must be kept for Sundays,” declared Jane.
“Oh, Grandma, can’t I wear it to school—just once—to show the boys?”
“And spill ink on it! You can not! Go and hang it up and lay the stockings in a drawer. Let’s see what your mother says in the letter.” She unpinned it from the stockings and opened it. “Cristabel hadn’t much sense, wasting an envelope on it.”
He stood with his hands clenched while she read the letter slowly aloud. He wanted to fling himself on her and tear it from her hands. It was his own private letter, written by his mother to him—the first he had ever had!
“DEAR SHAW,
I am sending you this suit for a birthday present and the stockings too. Of course I knit them, but I bought the suit at Bunting’s—”
“My goodness, to think of her buying it at Bunting’s!” exclaimed Esther. “Why didn’t she go to some cheaper place?”
“Cristabel always had big ideas,” said her mother. She read on:—
“It is a good suit and I hope you will be careful of it. When you take it off lay it flat in the drawer and don’t put things in the pockets. I got it a large size because Ma tells me you are growing so fast. I do hope you are being a good boy and trying to help all you can on the farm. It is very kind of your grandpa and grandma to have you there and I hope you are showing them that you are grateful.”
Jane Gower took her eyes from the letter to look at Shaw. There was accusation in her eyes. The three young women also looked at him. Letitia said:—
“I haven’t seen much gratitude in him.”
“He thinks it doesn’t cost anything to keep a big lump of a boy,” added Esther.
“He sleeps while a thief sneaks in and steals our money,” said Beaty.
“Shaw knows he is welcome here,” said their mother, “but it’s just as Cristabel says, he might show a little gratitude.”
Shaw