Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/312

308 had finished the farm labors, and curling up in an old chair that he had unearthed from a dark corner, she would talk to him as she did to no other person, not even her grandfather.

During the cold months, when work on the farm was slack, Philip had determined to try to repair some of the beautiful old bits of discarded furniture piled up under the eaves of his attic refuge. Some must be scraped with broken glass and some must be treated with a strong concoction to take off the cracking varnish that had been foolishly applied by some Bolling housewife who wanted shiny furniture. Aunt Peachy would sniff suspiciously when the odor of this varnish destroyer reached her nostrils, and then with head on one side she would listen to the mysterious sound of persistent scraping.

Philip had finally moved a cot up into the attic, because he was constantly being annoyed by Aunt Peachy slipping into his bed room. Sometimes he would awaken in the night, conscious of her presence. At the slightest movement on his part she would be gone like a startled rat. At last he moved his clothes to the attic, too, as one of her conjuring tricks was to put strange parcels of incongruous and nondescript articles in the pockets of his suits, in the toes of his shoes or in the lining of an over-