The Camerons of Highboro Part 6

Oughtn't somebody, as Stannard said, to have warned her? These boys'

people might have been very common persons, not at all like Camerons.

The fact that no relatives appeared proved that, didn't it? Every one who was any one at all had a family. Bruce did not look common: his gray eyes and his broad forehead and his keen, thin face were almost distinguished, and his manners were above criticism. But one never could tell. And hadn't he been brought up by Camerons? The very openness with which he had told his story had something fine about it.

He, like Laura, seemed to see nothing in it to conceal.

Well, was there? Elliott could quite clearly imagine what Aunt Margaret, Stannard's mother, would say to that question. She had never especially cared for Aunt Margaret. As Elliott looked at Bruce Fearing, one of the pillars of her familiar world began to totter.

Actually, she could think of no particularly good reason why, when she had heard his story, she should proceed to shun him. His history simply didn't seem to matter, except to make her sorry for him; and yet she couldn't be really sorry for a boy who had been brought up by Aunt Jessica.

Perhaps the Cameron Farm atmosphere was already beginning to work.

"I think you and your brother had luck," she said.

"I know we did," answered Bruce.

Elliott turned the conversation. "I wish you could tell me what you were going to say, when we were interrupted yesterday, about a person's having no choice except how he will do things--_you_ having had only that kind of choice."

"I remember," said Bruce. "Well, for one thing, I suppose I could get grouchy, if I chose, over not knowing who my people were."

"They may have been very splendid," said Elliott.

Bruce smiled. "It's not likely."

"In that case," she countered, "you have the satisfaction of _not_ knowing who they were."

"Exactly. But that's rather a crawl, isn't it? Of course, a fellow would like to know."

The boy bent forward, and, with painstaking care, selected a blade from a tuft of gra.s.s growing between his feet. He nibbled a minute before he spoke again.

"See here, I'm going to tell you something I haven't told a soul. I'm crazy to go to the war. Sometimes it seems as though I couldn't stay home. When Pete's letters come I have to go away somewhere quick and chop wood! Anything to get busy for a while."

"Aren't you too young? Would they take you?"

"Take me? You bet they'd take me! I'm eighteen. Don't I look twenty?"

The girl's eye ran critically over the strong young body, with its long, supple, sinewy lines. "Yes," she nodded. "I think you do."

"They'd take me in a minute, in aviation or anything else."

"Then why don't you?"

"Who'd help Father Bob through the farm stunts? Young Bob's gone, and Pete and Sidney. They were always here for the summer work. Henry's a fine lad, but a boy still. Tom's nothing but a boy, though he does his bit. As for the Women's Land Army, it's got up into these parts, but not in force. Father Bob can't hire help: it's not to be had.

That's why Mother Jess and the girls are going in so for farm work.

They never did it before this year, except in sport. We have more land under cultivation this summer than ever before, and fewer hands to harvest it with. But Mother and the girls sha'n't have to work harder than they're doing now, if I can help it. Could I go off and leave them, after all they've done for me? But that's not it, either--grat.i.tude. They're mine, Father Bob and Mother Jess are, and the rest; they're my folks. You're not exactly grateful to your own folks, you know. They belong to you. And you don't leave what belongs to you in the lurch."

"No," said Elliott. With awakened eyes she was watching Bruce. No boy had ever talked of such things to her before. "So you're not going?"

"Not of my own will. Of course, if the war lasts and I'm drafted, or the help problem lightens up, it will be different. Pete's gone. It was Pete's right to go. He's the elder."

"But you _are_ choosing," Elliott cried earnestly. "Don't you see?

You're choosing to stay at home and--" words came swiftly into her memory--"'fight it out on these lines all summer.'"

Bruce's smile showed that he recognized her quotation, but he shook his head. "Choosing? I haven't any choice--except being decent about it. Don't _you_ see I can't go? I can only try to keep from thinking about not going."

"You being you," said the girl, and she spoke as simply and soberly as Bruce himself, though her own warmth surprised her, "I see you can't go. But was that all you meant"--her voice grew ludicrously disappointed--"by a person's having a choice only of how he will do a thing? There's nothing to that but making the best of things!"

Bruce Fearing threw back his head and laughed heartily.

"You're the funniest girl I've ever seen."

"Then you can't have seen many. But _is_ there?"

"Perhaps not. Stupid, isn't it?"

"Yes," she nodded, "I'm afraid it is. And frightfully old. I was hoping you were going to tell me something new and exciting."

The boy chuckled again. "Nothing so good as that. Besides, I've a hunch the exciting things aren't very new, after all."

Elliott went to sleep that night, if not any happier, at least more interested. She had looked deep into the heart of a boy, different, it appeared, from any boy that she had ever known; and something loyal and st.u.r.dy and tender she had seen there had stirred her. It was odd how well acquainted she felt with him; odd, too, how curious she was to know him better, even though he hadn't the least idea who his grandfather had been. "Bother his grandfather!" Elliott chuckled to realize how such a sentiment would horrify Aunt Margaret. Grandfathers were very important to Aunt Margaret and Aunt Margaret's children.

Grandfathers had always seemed fairly important to Elliott herself until now. Was it their relative unimportance in the Robert Camerons'

estimation, or a pair of steady gray eyes, that had altered her valuation? The girl didn't know and she was keen enough to know that she didn't; keen enough, too, to perceive that the change in her estimation of grandfathers applied to a single case only and might be merely temporary.

However that might be, she was not ready yet to do anything so inherently distasteful as make the best of what she didn't like, especially when n.o.body but herself and two boys would know it. When one makes the best of things, one likes to do it to crowded galleries, that perceive what is going on and applaud. The Robert Camerons, Elliott was quite sure, wouldn't applaud. They would take it as a matter of course, just as they took her as a matter of course. They were quite charming about it, as delightful hosts as one could wish--if only they lived differently!--but Elliott wasn't used to being taken for granted. She might have been these new cousins' own sort, for any difference she could detect in their actions. They didn't seem to begin to understand her importance. Perhaps she wasn't so important, after all. The doubt had never before entered her mind.

The fact was, of course, that among these busy, efficient people she was feeling quite useless; and she didn't like to appear incompetent when she knew herself to be, in her own line, a thoroughly able person. But it irked her to think that she had been forced into a position where in self-defense she must either acquire a kind of efficiency she didn't want or do without. At the same time it troubled her lest this reluctance become apparent. For they were all loves and she wouldn't hurt their feelings for worlds. And she did wish them to admire her. But she had a feeling that they didn't altogether, not even Priscilla and Bruce.

Nevertheless, the next day when Laura asked whether she would take her book out to the hay-field or stay where she was on the porch, Elliott looked up from "Lorna Doone" and said, with the prettiest little coaxing air, "If I go, will you let me pitch hay?" And Laura answered as lightly, "Certainly." "I don't believe you," said Elliott. "You may ride on the hay-load," smiled Laura. "That won't do at all," Elliott shook her head. "If I can't pitch hay, I'll stay here." Laura laughed and said: "You certainly will be more comfortable here. I can't quite see you pitching hay." And Elliott retorted: "You don't know what I could do, if I tried. But since you won't let me try--"

It was all smiling and gay, but it was a crawl, and Elliott knew it and knew that Laura knew it, and she felt ashamed. Wasn't Stannard's frank shirking better than her camouflaged variety? But hadn't she picked berries all the morning in a stuffy sunbonnet under a broiling sun, until she felt as red as a berry and much less fresh and sweet?

"It's a shame," said Laura, "that this is just our busy season; but you know you have to make hay while the sun shines. Father thinks we can finish the lower meadows to-day. Then to-morrow we begin cutting on the hill. It's really fun to ride the hay-rake. I mostly drive the rake, though now and then I pitch for variety."

She looked so strong and brown and merry, as she talked, that Elliott, comfortably established with "Lorna Doone," felt almost like flinging her book into the next chair, slipping her arm through Laura's, and crying, "Lead on!" But she remembered just in time that, as she hadn't wished to come to the Cameron Farm, it would ill become her to have a good time there. Which may seem like a childish way of looking at the thing, but isn't really confined to children at all.

So the hay-makers tramped away down the road, their laughter floating cheerfully back over their shoulders; and Elliott sat on the big shady veranda and read her book.

She might have enjoyed it less had she heard Henry's frank summary at the turn of the lane, when his father inquired the whereabouts of Stannard.

"Beau Brummell hiked over to Upton half an hour ago. I offered him the other Henry, but he doesn't seem to care to drive anything short of a Pierce-Arrow. Twins, aren't they?" and Henry nodded in the direction of the veranda.

"Sh-h!" reproved Laura. "They're our guests."

"Guests is just it. Yes, they're _guests_, all right."

"Mother says they don't know how to work," Priscilla observed.

"That's another true word, too."

Mother turned gaily in the road ahead. "Who is talking about me?" she called.

Priscilla frisked on to join her, and Henry fell back to a confidential exchange with Laura. "Beau wouldn't be so bad if he could forget for a minute that he owned the earth and had a mortgage on the solar system.