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"Have you read what's written above the heading of it?" he asked. "No; what is it, J'rome?" Ozias put on his spectacles; Jerome pointed to a crabbed line above the heading of the mortgage deed. "I giv as present the forth part of my proputty, this morgidge to Ozier Lamm. "Simon Basset." "He's took crazy!" cried Ozias, staring wildly at it.
Jerome waited, trying to keep the sobs back. "Tell you what 'tis," said Ozias. "It's one of the cases where the sarpents and the doves come in. We've got to do a little manoeuvrin'. Don't you fret, J'rome, an' don't you go to frettin' of your mother.
"You don't s'pose J'rome will do it," one said, meditatively. "He'll do it when the river runs uphill an' crows are white," answered another, with a hard laugh. "I dun'no'," said another, doubtfully. "J'rome Edwards 's always been next-door neighbor to a fool, an' there's no countin' on what a fool 'll do!"
J'rome Edwards said so the minute he see him, an' now Doctor Prescott he's come, an' he says so. He was dead before they cut him down." With the throng of excited men and boys came one pale-faced, elderly woman, with her cap awry and her apron over her shoulders. She was Miss Rachel Blodgett, Eliphalet Means's house-keeper.
Jerome knew him; he was a young farmer, Henry Leeds by name, and not long married. Jerome had gone to school with the wife, and called her familiarly by name. "What's the matter, Laura?" he asked. "Oh, J'rome," she half sobbed, "do help me do call the doctor. Henry's awful sick; I know he is. He'd ought to have the doctor, but he won't because it costs so much. Do call him; I can't make him hear."
"I know it, father, and I'll work my fingers to the bone to make it good to you and mother. That's all I've got to live for now." "J'rome," whispered the father, thrusting his old face into his son's, with an angelic expression. "What is it, father?" "You shall have my fifteen hundred, an' build a new mill."
Somehow, too, Doctor Seth Prescott's face always stood out for him plainly among them in purple. Always, sooner or later, Ozias Lamb would seize Doctor Prescott and Simon Basset as living illustrations and pointed examples of the social wrongs. "Look at them two men," he would say, "to come down to this town; look at them. You've heard about cuttle-fishes, J'rome, 'ain't ye?"
"If I do begin work on the mill to-morrow," said he, "I sha'n't be able to fetch and carry to Dale, nor to do as much work in Uncle Ozias's shop. Do you suppose you can help out some?" "I can, if I'm as well as I be now, J'rome." "Of course, you can earn more than you do now," said Jerome. That was really the errand upon which he had come to the Judds that evening.
The next morning Jerome was just going out of the yard when he met Paulina Maria Judd and Henry coming in. Paulina Maria held her blind son by the hand, but he walked with an air of resisting her guidance. "J'rome, I've come to see you about that money," said Paulina Maria. "I hear you're goin' to give us two hundred and fifty dollars. I told you once we wouldn't take your money."
"I don't s'pose you'll understand it, J'rome, because you ain't come to thinking of such things yet, an' showed your sense that you ain't, but I took that very thing into account when I picked out my wife. There was another girl that I used to see home some, but, Lord, she was a high stepper!
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