"Why, bless my heart!" exclaimed Miss Chris, "I believe the child is fond of the chicken."
Eugenia, who was hovering by, burst into tears and declared that the rooster should not die.
"Twenty cents is s-o ch-ea-p for a li-fe," she sobbed. "It shan't be killed, Aunt Chris. It shall go in my hen-h-ou-se." And she rushed off to get her little tin bank from the top bureau drawer.
When the arrangements were concluded Nicholas started empty-handed down the box walk, the money jingling in his pocket. At the end of the long avenue of cedars there was a wide, unploughed common which extended for a quarter of a mile along the roadside. In spring and summer the ground was white with daisies and in the autumn it donned gorgeous vestments of golden-rod and sumach. In the centre of the waste, standing alike grim and majestic at all seasons, there was the charred skeleton of a gigantic tree, which had been stripped naked by a bolt of lightning long years ago. At its foot a prickly clump of briars surrounded the blackened trunk in a decoration of green or red, and from this futile screen the spectral limbs rose boldly and were silhouetted against the far-off horizon like the masts of a wrecked and deserted ship. A rail fence, where a trumpet-vine hung heavily, divided the field from the road, and several straggling sheep that had strayed from the distant flock stood looking shyly over the massive crimson clusters.
When Nicholas came out from the funereal dusk of the cedars the field was almost blinding in the morning glare, the yellow-centred daisies rolling in the breeze like white-capped billows on a sunlit sea. From the avenue to his father's land the road was unbroken by a single shadow—only to the right, amid the young corn, there was a solitary persimmon tree, and on the left the gigantic wreck stranded amid the tossing daisies.
The sun was hot, and dust rose like smoke from the white streak of the road, which blazed beneath a cloudless sky.
The boy was tired and thirsty, and as he tramped along the perspiration rose to his forehead and dropped, upon his shoulder. With a sigh of satisfaction he came upon the little cottage of his father and saw his stepmother taking the clothes in from the bushes where they had been spread to dry. It was Saturday, and ironing day, and he hoped for a chance at his lessons before night came, when he was so tired that the facts would not stick in his brain. He thought that it must be very easy to study in the mornings when you were fresh and eager and before that leaden weight centred behind your eyeballs.
When Marthy Burr saw him she called irritably:
"I say, Nick, did they take the chickens?"
Nicholas nodded, and, crossing the weeds in the garden, gave her the money from his pocket.
"They didn't say nothing 'bout wantin' more, I 'spose? Did you tell 'em I was fattenin' them four pairs of ducks?"
Nicholas shook his head. No, he hadn't told them.
"Well, your pa wants you down in the peanut field. You'd better get a drink of water first. You look powerful red."
An hour later, when work was over, he carried his book to the orchard and flung himself down beneath the trees. The judge had given him a biography of Jefferson, and he had learned his hero's life with lips and heart. The day that it was finished he put the volume under his arm and went to the rector's house.
"I want to join the church," he said bluntly.
The rector, a kindly, middle-aged man, with a love for children, turned to him in half-puzzled, half-sympathetic inquiry.
"You are young, my child," he replied, "to be so zealous a Christian."
"'Tain't that, sir," said the boy slowly. "I don't set much store by that. But I've got to go to heaven—because I can't see Thomas Jefferson no other way."
The rector did not smile. He was wiser than his generation, for he left the great man's own religion to himself and God. He said merely:
"When you are older we shall see, my boy—we shall see."
Nicholas left with a chill of disappointment, but as he passed along the street his name was called by Juliet Burwell, and she fluttered across to him in all her mystifying flounces and her gracious smile.
"I was at the rector's," she said, "and he told me that you wanted to be confirmed—and I want you to come into my Sunday-school class."
Nicholas met the kind eyes and blushed purple. Her beauty took away his breath and made his pulses leap. The slow, musical drawl of her speech soothed him like the running of clear water. He felt the image of Thomas Jefferson totter upon its pedestal, but it was steadied with a tremendous lurch. Jefferson was a man, after all, and this was only a woman.
"Will you come?" asked the soft voice, and he stammered an amazed and awkward assent.
VIII
On the Saturday after the day upon which Nicholas had pledged himself to attend Sunday-school Juliet Burwell asked him to come into Kingsborough and talk over the lesson for the following morning. At five o'clock in the afternoon he dressed himself with trembling hands and a perturbed heart; and for the first time in his life turned to look at his reflection in the small, cracked mirror hanging above the washstand in his stepmother's room.
As a finishing touch Marthy Burr tied a flaming plaid cravat beneath his collar.
"You ain't much on looks," she remarked as she drew back to survey him, "but you've got as peart a face as I ever seed. I reckon you'll be plenty handsome for a man. I was al'ays kind of set against one of these pink an' white men, somehow. They're pretty enough to look at when you're feelin' first-rate, but when you git the neuralgy they sort of turns yo' stomach. I've a taste for sober colours in men and caliky."
"I think he looks beautiful," said Sairy Jane, her eyes on the cravat, and Nicholas felt a sudden glow of gratitude, and silently resolved to save up until he had enough money to buy her a hair ribbon.
"I ain't sayin' he don't," returned Marthy Burr with a severe glance in the direction of her eldest daughter, who was minding Jubal in the kitchen doorway. "Thar's red heads an' red heads, an' his ain't no redder than the reddest. But he came honestly by it, which is more than some folks can say as is got yellow. His father had it befo' him, an' thar's one good thing about it, you've got to be born with it or you ain't goin' to come by it no other way. I never seed a dyer that could set hair that thar colour 'cep'n the Lord Himself—an' I ain't one to deny that the Lord has got good taste in His own line."
Then, as Nicholas took up his hat, she added: "If they ask after me, Nick, be sure an' say I'm jes' po'ly."
Nicholas nodded and went out, followed to the road by Sairy Jane and Jubal, while his stepmother called after him to walk in the grass and try to keep his feet clean.
When he reached Kingsborough and crossed the green to the Burwell's house, which was in the lane called "Back Street," he fell to a creeping pace, held back by the fluttering of his pulses. Not until he saw Juliet standing at the little whitewashed gate did he brace himself to the full courage of approaching. When he spoke her name she opened the gate and gave him her hand, while all sense of diffidence fell from him.
"I've been looking at you for a long ways," he said boldly, "an' you were just like one of them tall lilies bordering the walk."
She blushed, turning her clear eyes upon him, and he felt a great desire to kiss the folds of her skirt or the rose above her left temple. He had never seen any one so good or so kind or so beautiful, and he vowed passionately in his rustic little heart that he would always love her best—best of all—that he would fight for her if he might, or work for her if she needed it. There was none like her—not his stepmother—not Sairy Jane—not even Eugenia. She was different—something of finer clay, made to be waited upon and worshipped like the picture of the goddess standing on the moon that he had seen in the judge's study.
Juliet smiled upon