Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/164

160 flesh on his huge bones. He walked a little unsteadily, as though he had had a little too much drink. His hair and beard were grizzled and his eyes were growing dim, but otherwise he looked as Philip remembered him when he was a child and Old Abe used to let him ride the horse while he plowed. Old Abe had always been kind to him, although in a furtive way as if he did not want anyone to see him. Perhaps he felt that his mother, Aunt Peachy, would have disapproved of his showing any attention to the boy, whom she always had resented as a person who was rivaling her "baby."

"No, Uncle Abe, I haven't forgotten a thing you taught me while I have been off trying to get an education, not a thing, and what's more, I have been learning more things about farming—things I am going to introduce here at The Hedges. You are going to help me, too, aren't you, Uncle Abe?"

"Well, I ain't no hand ter be takin' up new notions," hesitated Abe. "I'm a gonter run this farm lak I been a runnin' it an' lak Marse Rolfe runned it, an' his paw befo' him. You might take a lil' piece er lan' down in the bottom ter 'speriment with," he suggested, as though Philip had been a child who wanted to play at gardening.