"Never mind,"returned her husband,stopping her reflectively,"best leave it as it is;if it's necessary I'll tell him.But don't any of you say anything,do you hear?"Nevertheless a few hours later,when the store was momentarily free of loungers,and Harkutt had relieved his son of his monotonous charge,he made a pretense,while abstractedly listening to an account of the boy's stewardship,to look through a drawer as if in search of some missing article.
"You didn't see anything of a paper I left somewhere about here yesterday?"he asked carelessly.
"The one you picked up when you came in last night?"said the boy with discomposing directness.
Harkutt flushed slightly and drew his breath between his set teeth.
Not only could he place no reliance upon ordinary youthful inattention,but he must be on his guard against his own son as from a spy!But he restrained himself.
"I don't remember,"he said with affected deliberation,"what it was I picked up.Do you?Did you read it?"The meaning of his father's attitude instinctively flashed upon the boy.He HAD read the paper,but he answered,as he had already determined,"No."An inspiration seized Mr.Harkutt.He drew 'Lige Curtis's bill of sale from his pocket,and opening it before John Milton said,"Was it that?""I don't know,"said the boy."I couldn't tell."He walked away with affected carelessness,already with a sense of playing some part like his father,and pretended to whistle for the dog across the street.Harkutt coughed ostentatiously,put the paper back in his pocket,set one or two boxes straight on the counter,locked the drawer,and disappeared into the back passage.John Milton remained standing in the doorway looking vacantly out.But he did not see the dull familiar prospect beyond.He only saw the paper his father had opened and unfolded before him.It was the same paper he had read last night.But there were three words written there THAT WERE NOT THERE BEFORE!After the words "Value received"there had been a blank.He remembered that distinctly.This was filled in by the words,"Five hundred dollars."The handwriting did not seem like his father's,nor yet entirely like 'Lige Curtis's.What it meant he did not know,--he would not try to think.He should forget it,as he had tried to forget what had happened before,and he should never tell it to any one!
There was a feverish gayety in his sisters'manner that afternoon that he did not understand;short colloquies that were suspended with ill concealed impatience when he came near them,and resumed when he was sent,on equally palpable excuses,out of the room.He had been accustomed to this exclusion when there were strangers present,but it seemed odd to him now,when the conversation did not even turn upon the two superior visitors who had been there,and of whom he confidently expected they would talk.Such fragments as he overheard were always in the future tense,and referred to what they intended to do.His mother,whose affection for him had always been shown in excessive and depressing commiseration of him in even his lightest moments,that afternoon seemed to add a prophetic and Cassandra-like sympathy for some vague future of his that would require all her ministration."You won't need them new boots,Milty dear,in the changes that may be comin'to ye;so don't be bothering your poor father in his worriments over his new plans.""What new plans,mommer?"asked the boy abruptly."Are we goin'away from here?"