"Mr. Horn lives in the city, father, and never sees such things."
"Well, if he does he knows all about it. You own negroes, don't you?" The voice was louder; the manner a trifle more insistent. Oliver could hardly keep his temper. Only Margaret's anxious face held him in check.
"No; not now, sir--my father freed all of his."
The tones were thin and cold. Margaret had never heard any such sound before from those laughing lips.
Silas Grant was leaning forward out of his chair.
The iron jaw was doing the talking now.
"Where are these negroes?" he persisted.
"Two of them are living with us, sir. They are in my father's house now."
"Rather shiftless kind of help, I guess. You've got to watch 'em all the time, I hear. Steal everything they get their hands on, don't they?" This was said with a dry, hard laugh that was meant to be conciliatory--as if he expected Oliver to agree with him now that he had had his say.
Oliver turned quickly toward his host's chair. For a moment he was so stunned and hurt that he could hardly trust himself to speak. He looked up and saw the expression of pain on Margaret's face, and instantly remembered where he was and who was offending him.
"Our house-servants, Mr. Grant, are part of our home," he said, in a low, determined voice, without a trace of anger. "Old Malachi, who was my father's body-servant, and who is now our butler, is as much beloved by everyone as if he were one of the family. For myself, I can never remember the time when I did not love Malachi."
Before her father could answer, Margaret had her hand on Oliver's shoulder.
"Don't tell all your good stories to father now," she said, with a grateful smile. "Wait until after dinner, when we can all hear them. Come, Mr. Horn, I know you want to get the dust out of your eyes." Then in an aside, "Don't mind him, Ollie.
It's only father's way, and he's the dearest father in the world when you understand him," and she pressed his arm meaningly as they walked to the door.
Before they reached the threshold the gate swung to with a click, and a young man with a scythe slung over his shoulder strode up the path. He was in the garb of a farm-hand; trousers tucked into his boots, shirt open at the throat, and head covered by a coarse straw hat. This shaded a good-natured, sun-burnt face, lighted by two bright blue eyes.
"Oh, here comes my brother John," Margaret cried. "Hurry up, John--here's Mr. Horn."
The young man quickened his pace, stopped long enough to hang the scythe on the porch-rail, lifted his hat from his head, and, running up the short flight of steps, held out his hand cordially to Oliver, who advanced to meet him.
"Glad to see you, Mr. Horn. Madge has told us all about you. Excuse my rig--we are short of men on the farm, and I took hold. I'm glad of the chance, for I get precious little exercise since I left college. You came from East Branch by morning stage, I suppose? Oh, is that your trunk dumped out in the road? What a duffer I was not to know.
Wait a minute--I'll bring it in," and he sprang down the steps.
"No, let me," cried Oliver, running after him.
He had not thought of his trunk since he had helped stow it in the boot outside Ezra Pollard's gate--but then he had been on his way to Margaret's!
"No, you won't. Stay where you are--don't let him come, Madge."
The two young men raced down the path, Juno scampering after them. John, who could outrun any man at Dartmouth, vaulted over the fence and had hold of the brass handle before Oliver could open the gate.
"Fair-play!" cried Oliver, and they each grasped a handle--either one could have held it out at arm's length with one hand--and brought it up the garden-path, puffing away in pantomime as if it weighed a ton, and into the house. There they deposited it in the bedroom that was to be Oliver's during the two days of his visit at Brookfield Farm, Margaret clapping her hands in high glee, and her mother holding back the door for them to pass in.
Silas Grant watched the young fellows until they disappeared inside the door, lifted himself slowly from his seat by his long arms, stretched himself, with a yawn, to his full height, and said aloud to himself as he pushed his chair back against the wall:
"His father's got a negro for body-servant, has he, and a negro for butler--just like 'em. They all want somebody to wait on 'em."
At dinner Oliver sat on Mrs. Grant's right--her best ear, she said--Margaret next, and John opposite.
The father was at the foot, in charge of the carving-knife.
During the pauses in the talk Oliver's eyes wandered around the room, falling on the queer paper lining the walls--hunting-scenes, with red-coated fox-hunters leaping five-barred gates; on the side-board covered with silver, but bare of a decanter--only a pitcher filled with cider which Hopeful Prime, the servant, a woman of forty in spectacles, and who took part in the conversation, brought from the cellar; and finally on a family portrait that hung above the fireplace. A portrait was always a loadstone to Oliver.
Mrs. Grant had been watching his glance.
"That's Mr. Grant's great-uncle--old Governor Shaw," she said, with a pleased smile; "and the next one to it is Margaret's great-grandmother This one--" and she turned partly in her chair and pointed to a face Oliver thought he had seen before, where, he couldn't remember--"is John Quincy Adams. He was my father's most intimate friend," and a triumphant expression overspread her face.
Oliver smiled, too, inwardly, to himself. The talk, to his great surprise, reminded him of Kennedy Square. Family portraits were an inexhaustible topic of conversation in most of its homes. He had never thought before that people at the North had any ancestors--none they were very proud of.
John looked up and winked. "Great scheme naming me after his Royal Highness," he said, in an undertone. "Sure road to the White House; they thought I'd make a good third."
