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“You can call it that if you like.”
“Don’t you wish you was me, so you could wear good clothes all the time?”
“I should like to wear the good clothes, but I’d rather be myself than anybody else.”
“Some time I shall be rich,” said Rodney complacently. “I shall have all grandfather’s money.”
“Won’t it go to your mother?”
“Oh, well, she’ll give it to me. I hope you don’t think you and your mother will get any of it?”
“We ought to, for mother is making a slave of herself, but I don’t think we will. If your grandfather would do more for us now we wouldn’t mind inheriting anything.”
There was a tapping on the front window.
“That means dinner, I suppose,” said Grant.
“Are you going to sit down with us?” asked Rodney, eying Grant’s costume with disfavor.
“Yes.”
“In those clothes?”
“I haven’t time to change them. Besides my Sunday suit isn’t much better.”
At the table, toward the close of the meal, Rodney said, “Grandfather, Grant isn’t dressed very well.”
Seth Tarbox frowned.
“Has he been complaining to you?” he asked. “He’s been pesterin’ all the mornin’ about new clothes. I told him money was skerce.”
“I can save you expense, grandfather. I will give him an old suit of mine – one I have cast off.”
“Why, that’s an excellent plan,” said Tarbox, brightening up. “Do you hear that, Grant? You won’t need to buy a new suit for yourself now.”
“I don’t care for any of Rodney’s old clothes,” answered Grant, with an indignant flush.
“Sho! sho! You’re acting very contrary. Rodney’s suit is a good deal better than yours, I’ve no doubt.”
“I don’t know whether it is or not, but I’m entitled to new clothes, and I want them.”
“What do you say to that, Mrs. Tarbox?” demanded the farmer, looking over at his wife.
“I say that he is right. Grant has worked hard, Mr. Tarbox, and he ought to be decently dressed.”
“Rodney,” said his mother, “your kind offer is thrown away.”
“So I see,” said Rodney, extending his plate for another piece of pie.
“I’m sorry you take Grant’s part, Mrs. T.,” said the farmer. “I won’t countenance no extravagance. What’s the use of spending good money when a suit of clothes is offered for nothing.”
“If the suit is a good one,” retorted Grant, “why does Rodney lay it aside?”
“There is a difference between him and you,” said Mrs. Bartlett in an acid tone.
“What difference?”
“I’m a gentleman and you’re a farm boy,” said Rodney, taking it upon himself to answer.
“I shan’t always be a farm boy!”
“No, you won’t be a boy when you’re grown up,” returned Rodney, looking around to see if his joke were appreciated.
“There aint no disgrace in bein’ a farm boy,” said Seth Tarbox. “I worked on a farm myself when I was a boy, and I’ve worked on a farm ever since.”
“I’m going to college, and be a lawyer,” said Rodney in a consequential tone.
“It costs a sight of money to go to college, Sophia,” said Tarbox deprecatingly.
“I shall make a lot of money when I am a lawyer,” explained Rodney. “Why, I read in the paper that there are some lawyers that make fifty thousand dollars. Besides, I may get elected to Congress. That’s better than working on a farm. When Grant is getting fifteen dollars a month and his board, as a hired man on a farm, I will ride in my carriage, and live like a gentleman.”
“I may be a rich man myself,” interrupted Grant.
“You a rich man! Ho, ho!” laughed Rodney. “You look like it.”
“No, I don’t look like it, but I may get there all the same.”
“You talk a good deal for a boy of your age,” remarked Mrs. Bartlett in a tone of rebuke.
“No more than Rodney.”
But Grant, looking at his mother, saw that she was disturbed, and refrained from noticing any further speeches of his young antagonist.
“By the way, father,” said Mrs. Bartlett, “you remember John Heywood, of our town?”
“Yes; what of him?”
“He’s just got back from California.”
“It’s dreadful expensive goin’ to California.”
“That isn’t of much account if you can bring back a lot of money.”
“Did John Heywood bring back a lot of money?” asked the farmer, pricking up his ears.
“He brought back ten thousand dollars.”
“Sho! How you talk!”
“It’s true, every word of it.”
“How did he make it?”
“Mining, I believe. He’s bought the Ezra Jones place, and is going to put up a nice house.”
Among the most interested listeners was Grant Colburn. His color went and came, and he seemed excited.
“How long was Mr. Heywood in California,” he asked.
“About a year. He was gone a good deal longer, for he went across the plains, and it took four months. He came back across the Isthmus.”
“I would like to go California,” said Grant thoughtfully.
“You go to California! A boy like you!” repeated Mrs. Bartlett scornfully. “What could you do?”
“I could make more money than I do here,” answered Grant with spirit.
“I reckon you won’t go in a hurry,” said Seth Tarbox composedly. “You haven’t money enough to get you twenty-five miles, and I s’pose it’s as much as two thousand miles from Iowa to Californy.”
Grant felt that there was a good deal of truth in his step-father’s words, but the idea had found lodgment in his brain, and was likely to remain there.
“I mean to go sometime!” he said resolutely.
“You’d better start right off after dinner!” said Rodney in a sneering tone.
CHAPTER III
A TERRIBLE RESPONSIBILITY
“Grant, you may go over to the other farm and ask Luke Weldon for the pitchfork he borrowed of me last week. There’s no knowing how long he would keep it if I didn’t send for it.”
“All right, sir.”
“Rodney can walk with you if he wants to.”
“Thank you,” said Rodney, shrugging his shoulders, “but I don’t care to walk a mile and a half for a pitchfork. I’ll go part way, though, to the village.”
The two boys started out together. Rodney looked askance at his companion’s poor clothes.
“You’re foolish not to take the suit I offered you,” he said. “Its a good deal better than yours.”
“I presume it is.”
“Then why don’t you want it?”
“Because it will prevent your grandfather buying me a new one.”
“Have you asked him?”
“Yes, I asked him this morning.”
“What did he say?”
“That he would buy a new one for himself, and have his best suit cut down for me.”
Rodney laughed.
“You’d look like a fright,” he said.
“I think so myself,” assented Grant with a smile.
“You’d better take mine than his. Grandfather isn’t much like a dude in dress.”
“No; he tells me that I dress as well as he.”
“So you do, nearly. However, it does not make much difference how an old man like him dresses.”
Rodney rather approved of his grandfather’s scanty outlay on dress, for it would enable him to leave more money to his mother and himself.
“Do you know how old grandfather is?” asked Rodney.
“I believe he is sixty-nine.”
“That’s pretty old. He won’t live many years longer probably. Then the property will come to mother and me.”
“Shall you come to live on the farm?”
“Not much. Mother says she’ll sell both farms, and then we may go to Chicago to live.”
Grant did not like Mr. Tarbox, but he was rather disgusted to hear his grandson speculate so coolly about his death.
“Don’t you think grandfather is failing?” continued Rodney.
“I don’t know that he is,” answered Grant coldly.
“Mother thinks he’s got kidney disease. Old men are very apt to have that trouble.”
“I never heard him complain of being sick.”
By this time the two boys had reached the village.
“I think I’ll drop into the drug store,” said Rodney. “They keep cigarettes there, don’t they?”
“I believe so.”
“Mother don’t like me to smoke, but I do it on the sly. I’ll give you a cigarette, if you want one,” he said, in an unusual fit of generosity.
“Thank you, but I don’t smoke.”
