Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/88

84 characteristics were sadness, patience and strength.

"Have I ever seen you before? I did not remember Bolling had a grown son."

Philip smiled, as he answered:

"I have seen you, sir, many times. When I was a boy my father often sent me here with messages about—"

Philip hesitated, remembering that the messages were always complaints about one thing or another—the Major's cows having crossed the river and got in the Bollings' corn, or maybe a Bolling sow had strayed with her young, and when she was brought back by a Taylor servant the progeny had fallen short of the original number and the owner had written an indignant note accusing the Taylor darkey of deliberate theft and even intimating the master had been cognizant of the shortage.

In recalling those notes Philip Bolling felt himself blushing to the roots of his hair, not only because of the spirit of unneighborliness that had prompted them, but because of the badly spelled scrawls in which his father had written the sow "sough" and how Major Taylor had answered in kind bringing counter charges concerning his "c-o-u-g-h" cow.

"Yes! Yes! I remember there was a boy,"