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Most always " "Then it warn't you I saw pitchin' in the channel fur a couple of hours yesterday afternoon," commented the tormentor. "No. That is let me think a minute," meditated Zenas Henry. "Yes, I guess it was me, after all," he admitted with reluctant honesty.
Zenas, take the preacher's horse," she continued to a stout lad who had just come in from the hayfield. "I will help him," said Neville, proceeding with the boy. It was the almost invariable custom of the pioneer preachers to see that their faithful steeds were groomed and fed, before they attended to their own wants.
As he went whistling out toward the barn Annie heard him salute Unc' Zenas with familiar friendliness: "How's tricks this morning? Think the Jersey'll be fresh next week?" Aunt Dolcey heard him, too, and she and Annie exchanged long glances. The old woman's said, "You see what I told you was true"; and the young woman's answered, "Yes, I see, and I understand. I'm going to see it through."
Then, catching sight of the old inventor half concealed behind his workbench, he shouted: "Here, Willie, you rascal, out with you! Don't go hidin' there behind that table. Man alive, why didn't you tell us what you was up to?" "Did it work, Zenas Henry?" queried the little fellow eagerly. "Did it work!" mimicked Zenas Henry with a guffaw. "Say, Phineas, did it?"
"There will be a grim revenge for this, before long," said Captain Villiers, who had embraced the earliest opportunity to renew his homage at a shrine that had almost unconsciously become very dear. "In which I hope to take part," interjected Zenas, with a fierce gesture. "We must carry war into Africa," continued the Captain. "Hitherto, for the most part, we have acted on the defensive.
"So we were," replied Tom Loker with all his old sang froid, "longer than we wanted." "How did you like picking oakum for the Yankees, Sandy?" asked Zenas. "Nae oakum picked I," said Sandy with an air of grim determination. "It was clean against ma conscience to gi' aid or comfort to the King's enemies in ony way." "What did they say to that?" asked the squire.
Zenas, crouched by the chimney-jamb, roasting chestnuts and "popping" corn; Sandy, with the characteristic thrift of his countrymen, set about repairing a broken whip-stock and fitting it with a new lash; Tom Loker idly whittled a stick, and Miss Katharine drew up her low rocking-chair beside her father, and proceeded to nimbly knit a stout-ribbed stocking, intended for his comfort for girls in those days knew how to knit, ay, and card the wool and spin the yarn too.
Abbie, who was a systematic housekeeper, approved of his habit of wiping his feet before he entered the door and the careful fashion he had of replacing any chair he moved; most men, she averred, were so thoughtless and untidy. But it was with Zenas Henry that the young man won his greatest triumph, the two immediately coming into harmony on the common ground of motor-boating.
"It keeps his arithmetic brushed up. I'll bet you he could beat you at a sum, Jonas." The triumphant Captain Benjamin observed a complacent silence. "Let Benjamin an' his watch alone, Jonas," drawled Zenas Henry, speaking for the first time. "Somebody in the house has got to be up on mathematics, an' it may as well be Benjamin as another.
"Well, if we knew as much when we're born as we do when we get ready to die, what would be the use of livin' seventy odd years?" In spite of his irritation Zenas Henry smiled. "I don't s'pose you're feelin' like tacklin' another pump to-day," he ventured with hesitation. "Ours up at the white cottage has gone on a strike, too." Instantly Willie was interested. "What's got yours?" he asked.
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