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Clemantiny knew that when Miss Salome did make up her mind and announced it in that very quiet, very unmistakable tone, she was mistress of the situation and intended to remain so. "Oh, very well," she retorted. "You'll please yourself, Salome, of course. I think it would be wiser to wait until you found out a little more about him."
"What do you think you can do, sonny?" "Anything," said Chester sturdily. "I'm used to work." "He's right," whispered Clemantiny aside. "He's smart as a steel trap. But just you keep an eye on him all the same, Martin." Chester soon proved his mettle in the harvest field. In the brisk three weeks that followed, even Clemantiny had to admit that he earned every cent of his wages.
Miss Salome exclaimed with horror over the fact of his sleeping in a pile of lumber for seven nights, but Clemantiny listened in silence, never taking her eyes from the boy's pale face. When Chester finished, she nodded. "We've got it all now. There's nothing more behind, Salome. It would have been better for you to have told as straight a story at first, young man."
He didn't care for pride any longer; he just cried and didn't even pretend he wasn't crying when Miss Salome came in to sit by him a little while and talk to him. That talk comforted Chester. He realized that, come what might, he would always have a good friend in Miss Salome aye, and in Clemantiny, too.
If, when we get there, your aunt is willing to let you stay with me, you can come back." "There's a big chance of that!" said Clemantiny sourly. "A woman's likely to give up a boy like Chester a good, steady worker and as respectful and obliging as there is between this and sunset very likely, isn't she! Well, this taffy is all burnt to the saucepan and clean ruined but what's the odds!
In the Mount Hope kitchen Miss Salome was at that moment deep in discussion with her "help" over the weighty question of how the damsons were to be preserved. Miss Salome wanted them boiled; Clemantiny Bosworth, the help, insisted that they ought to be baked. Clemantiny was always very positive.
What Miss Salome saw when she hurried out was a white-faced boy stretched on the doorstep at Clemantiny's feet. "Is he dead?" she gasped. "Dead? No," sniffed Clemantiny. "He's fainted, that's what he is. Where on earth did he come from? He ain't a Hopedale boy." "He must be carried right in," exclaimed Miss Salome in distress. "Why, he may die there. He must be very ill."
He would have been content to stay there and work as hard as he had ever worked at Upton, merely for the roof over his head and the food he ate. The making of a fortune seemed a small thing compared to the privilege of being near Miss Salome. "But I suppose I must just up and go," he muttered dolefully. One day Miss Salome had a conference with Clemantiny.
He felt sure that Johnny would never have acted as he had, and if Chester now had one dear ambition on earth, it was to be as good and manly a fellow as Johnny must have been. But he could never be that as long as he kept the truth about himself from Miss Salome. "That boy has got something on his mind," said the terrible Clemantiny, who, Chester felt convinced, could see through a stone wall.
Miss Salome sighed heavily and often as she made her preparations for the morrow's journey. Clemantiny stalked about with her grim face grimmer than ever. As for Chester, when he went to bed that night in the little porch chamber, he cried heartily into his pillows.
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