Left to Themselves: Being the Ordeal of Philip and Gerald. Edward Prime-Stevenson
me, unless you care to stay and fish—for more tramps.”
“No, I thank you,” answered Gerald. “You would be nowhere near to help me fight them.” A determined flash came into the boy’s countenance, such as he had shown when he caught up the bit of rock in defiance of the ragged Sip.
“O, I beg your pardon,” he went on in his odd, rather grown-up manner; “I haven’t said how much obliged to you I am for coming down there.”
“You are quite welcome,” laughed his new friend, looking down with frank eyes upon the younger boy.
“Perfectly welcome, ‘Gerald,’ you were going to say,” added his companion, simply, feeling as if he had known for years this winning new-comer, who seemed not so much boy or man, but a confusion of both, that made up some one with whom he could speedily be on familiar terms. “Hark! Mrs. Wooden is calling you. That horse of yours is eating an apple out of Miss Beauchamp’s hand, too.”
The two Woodens and their boarder, Miss Beauchamp, walked forward to meet the boys as they advanced from the lane.
“Well, Philip,” was the white-headed old farmer’s greeting, “where did you fly to so sudden? Neither wife, here, nor I could set eyes on you. And so you’ve struck up an acquaintance with Master Gerald, have you?”
“Well, yes; and struck an acquaintance of his in the middle of his back,” responded Philip. “How do you do, Miss Beauchamp? Didn’t you, any of you, see the fight?”
“Fight!” cried Mrs. Wooden, clapping her fat hand to her bosom and nearly dropping the wooden tray of fresh butter she held. “Why, Philip Touchtone! Who has been a-fightin’? Not you—nor you?” she added, turning to Gerald.
“We all have been fighting, I’m afraid, Mrs. Wooden,” said the latter—“three of us.”
After this preamble there had to be an account of the skirmish. Miss Beauchamp and Mrs. Wooden alike decided it was “shocking.”
“He might have drawn a pistol on both of you!” exclaimed Miss Beauchamp, “and a great deal more might have come of it.”
“Well,” Gerald protested, “the only thing that’s come of it is that I have met a friend of yours here.”
“And you couldn’t do a better thing, Gerald!” exclaimed Mrs. Wooden, beginning to stow away butter and eggs in the spring-wagon from the Ossokosee House. “Mr. Philip Touchtone is a particular pet of Miss Beauchamp’s and mine when he is a good boy—as he almost always is,” the farmer’s fat wife lightly added.
“And a capital friend,” added the grave Miss Beauchamp, with a smile, “for a boy about the age and size of one I know to have on his books. You ask Mr. Marcy over at the hotel all about him, Gerald. Now, you do that for me soon.”
“O, pshaw, Miss Beauchamp!” Philip interrupted, his wide-awake face rather red, and straightening himself up to endure these broad compliments, “you and Mrs. Wooden ought to remember that people who praise friends to their faces are said to be fond of slandering them behind their backs. Come, Mr. Wooden, I promised Mr. Marcy to be back as soon as I could. Jump in, Gerald.”
The boy swung his slender figure up to the cushioned seat. Philip quickly followed after a few more words with the farmer. Then the wagon rattled out into the road and was soon bowling along to the Ossokosee. Philip favored the baskets and bundles in the back of the spring-wagon with a final glance, and then turned to Gerald with the manner of a person who intends asking and answering a large number of questions. And Gerald felt quite eager to do the same thing.
Why each of these lads, so entirely out of his own free will, should have mutually confided details of their two histories, when each was so much a stranger, met to-day, and perhaps never sitting again within speaking-distance after to-morrow, was a riddle to both of them. But the solution of it is as old as the rocks in Wooden’s Ravine, perhaps older. We may keep our lives and thoughts under a lock and key as tightly as we like until the day comes when, somewhere along this crowded highway called Life, we all at once run square against some other human creature who is made by fate to be our best friend. Then, take my word for it, whether he is younger or older, he will find out from our own lips every thing in the bottom of our hearts that he chooses to ask about; and, what is more, we ought to find ourselves glad to trust such a person with even more than the whole stock that is there.
CHAPTER II.
MUTUAL CONFIDENCES; AND PHILIP TURNS RED IN THE FACE.
“This has been my first summer at the Ossokosee,” said Gerald, as the wagon trundled on. “Papa and I live in New York, in the Stuyvesant Hotel. We have always been to Shelter Island until this year.”
“I have lived quite a good deal in New York myself,” remarked Philip. “You see, I have nobody to look after me except Mr. Marcy. My mother died several years ago. In three or four weeks from this time Mr. Marcy takes me down to the city with him when this house is shut.”
“Is Mr. Marcy your uncle?”
“O, no! No relation at all. I often feel as if he was, though. He has kept watch of me and helped me with my education ever since my mother’s death.”
Touchtone’s eyes lost their happy light an instant.
“During the summer, of course, I have no time to do any studying, and not too much in the winter. I have a great deal else to busy me, helping Mr. Marcy.”
“Why, what do you help him with?” inquired Gerald, with interest, remembering Touchtone in the office and the dining-room, and indeed every-where about the Ossokosee, except the parlors.
“Well, Mr. Marcy calls me a kind of aid-de-camp to him and Mrs. Ingraham, the housekeeper, too, particularly when there is danger of the kitchen running short of supplies. Now and then, if the farmers around here fail us, I have to spend half the day driving about the country, or you might starve at supper-table all at once. O, and then I look after one or two books in the office!”
Gerald laughed.
“Papa has kept me here because he heard so much about the table; and because Mr. Marcy told him there were so few boys that I couldn’t get into mischief. Papa used to be a broker, but he don’t do any thing now. I believe he retired, or whatever they call it, a year or so ago. He’s been camping out with a party of gentlemen from the Stock Exchange ever since midsummer away up in Nova Scotia. I haven’t any mother either.”
“Why didn’t you go with them?” inquired Philip, guiding Nebuchadnezzar skillfully through an irregular series of puddles. The view of the rolling green country, dotted with farm-houses and gray or red barns, was now worth looking at as they came out on the flat hill-top.
“I should have liked to go very much; but papa said that they were all expecting to ‘rough it,’ and the weather might be too cold for me. He was afraid I would be sick or something, and I know I’d be a good deal of trouble to him. Hasn’t it stayed hot, though? I suppose they are having a splendid time up there all by themselves hunting and fishing. He wrote me that there wasn’t a house within five miles of them. In October we are to meet in New York again. School begins next week; but I’m not to hurry back this year.”
Gerald spoke of the “splendid time” rather wistfully. The little fellow had been lonely in the big Ossokosee, Philip fancied.
“What school do you go to?” inquired Gerald after a moment; “that is, when you are in New York?”
“Not to any now,” soberly responded Philip, with a frown coming over his forehead. It was the secret grief of his spirit that he had not been able to advance further in a thorough education. When Gerald spoke of his holidays coming to an end; he involuntarily envied this boy. “But before I came to live so much with