Page:St. Nicholas - Volume 41, Part 1.djvu/155

Rh this knight-errant—Happens to be traveling across wild country in this casual manner?”

They all looked at each other. None of them had yet thought of this. Bob took up his paper again. “Listen,” he said. “This is to-day’s paper, and I find an account of what happened yesterday on the railroad about ten miles north of us, on the stretch between Winton and Farnham.” He began to read from the newspaper.

Bob looked up. ‘“Perhaps,” he said, “we can now form a third theory of our own. There is a spiteful young brother for you, to do so much to make trouble for an honest and well-meaning, though perhaps unduly strict, older brother.”

“How do you know so much about him?” demanded Harriet.

“Because,” answered Bob, “though you yourself have not yet discovered it, all older brothers are honest and well-meaning. Even their strictness arises from the kindly desire to save unfortunate youngsters from mistakes which the elder has already committed and repented of. Now, shall we wire to this Mr. Wilson of New York?”

“But,” cried Harriet, “we can’t be sure that this is the same boy?”

Mr. Dodd rose. “The boy himself shall decide that. My dear,” he said to his wife, “we ’d better drive to Nate’s after dinner and see the lad. Meanwhile, dinner is waiting.”

Through the meal, the wallet weighed like lead in Harriet's pocket. It seemed to her as if every one must know that she had it. Her mother remarked on her lack of appetite, and noticed, without speaking of it, her absent-mindedness. But both of these characteristics were natural after such an experience as Harriet’s, and Mrs. Dodd, careful mother though she was, did not suspect that there was anything more on the girl’s mind.

Harriet was trying to decide what she ought to do. On the one hand, she had promised to tell no one of the wallet; but on the other, there was the fact, which she could not deny, that the wallet had been—no, not stolen from Brian, but found and kept. While her father had been giving Brian the money, Harriet had been obstinately silent, trying to find some way in which to keep her promise; but the longer she thought of the matter the more firmly she became convinced that she must tell.

“I will tell Mother about it immediately after dinner,” she decided.

But the meal was no sooner finished, with Harriet watching for a chance of a talk with her mother, than Mr. Dodd said to his wife, “Come, dear. The horse is waiting.”

“Where are you going?” cried Harriet.

“To Nate's,”” answered her mother. “We want to see how the boy is.”

In spite of her disappointment, Harriet looked at her mother gratefully. Mrs. Dodd, a very handsome woman for all her forty-five years, had more than her good looks wherewith to claim her daughter’s admiration. She was quick to do good; Nate had judged her well when he foresaw this visit. Harriet gave her Nate’s message: she might see the boy, but was not to expect to take him away.

“Very well,” laughed Mrs. Dodd. With her husband she departed.

Bob had gone to the mill. Harriet, left alone with Brian and Pelham, thanked her cousin for giving up his claim to the money. “It was very good of you,” she said.

“Good of him,” echoed Pelham. Harriet, “I tell you, that 's what I call ‘going some.'”

Brian sprang to his feet. “Confound you, Pelham,” he cried. “Cut that out!” He went quickly out of the room.

“Snappy, is n't he?” asked Pelham.

But with her mind still full of Brian’s generosity, Harriet saw nothing unnatural in his temper. “He does n't like to be praised,” she said. And Pelham returning no answer, she sat thinking.

It seemed to her that her course was clear.