Chapter 14 - Page 2

said he.
'Well, David, you know she is very young and uncommonly - ' she
hesitated.

'Han'some,' said he, 'we might as well own up if she is our child.'

'If she goes away,' continued Elizabeth, 'some of us ought t' go with
her.'

Then Uncle Eb and David went to their work in the fields and I to
my own task That very evening they began to talk of renting the
farm and going to town with the children.

I had a stent of cording wood that day and finished it before two
o'clock Then I got my pole of mountain ash, made hook and line
ready, dug some worms and went fishing. I cared not so much for
the fishing as for the solitude of the woods. I had a bit of thing to
do. In the thick timber there was a place where Tinkle brook began
to hurry and break into murmurs on a pebble bar, as if its feet were
tickled. A few more steps and it burst into a peal of laughter that
lasted half the year as it tumbled over narrow shelves of rock into
a foamy pool. Many a day I had sat fishing for hours at the little
fall under a birch tree, among the brakes and moss. No ray of
sunlight ever got to the dark water below me - the lair of many a
big fish that had yielded to the temptation of my bait. Here I lay in
the cool shade while a singular sort of heart sickness came over
me. A wild partridge was beating his gong in the near woods all
the afternoon. The sound of the water seemed to break in the
tree-tops and fall back upon me. I had lain there thinking an hour
or more when I caught the jar of approaching footsteps. Looking
up I saw Jed Feary coming through the bushes, pole in hand.

'Fishin'?' he asked.

'Only thinking,' I answered.

'Couldn't be in better business,' said he as he sat down beside me.

More than once he had been my father confessor and I was glad he
had come.

'In love?' he asked. 'No boy ever thinks unless he's in love.'

'In trouble,' said I.

'Same thing,' he answered, lighting his pipe. 'Love is trouble with a
bit of sugar in it - the sweetest trouble a man can have. What's the
matter?'

'It's a great secret,' I said, 'I have never told it. I am in love.'

'Knew it,' he said, puffing at his pipe and smiling in a kindly way.
'Now let's put in the trouble.'

'She does not love me,' I answered.

'Glad of it,' he remarked. 'I've got a secret t, tell you.'

'What's that?' I enquired.

'Wouldn't tell anybody else for the world, my boy,' he said, 'it's
between you an' me.'

'Between you an' me,' I repeated.

'Well,' he said, you're a fool.'

'That's no secret,' I answered much embarrassed.

'Yes it is,' he insisted, 'you're smart enough an' ye can have most
anything in this world if ye