CHAPTER XXXII HOME AGAIN

Mr. Ashbel Norton and Mr. George Brayton spent the evening of that day at Dr. Manning’s, and the former had an excellent opportunity for getting better acquainted with his new-found nephew and the friends he had made.

The upshot of it all may be summed up, however, in the words of Judge Danvers:

“Well, Mr. Brayton,” he said, “since you also are disposed to put your affairs in my hands, there is nothing for it but for me to prepare to go to England with Mr. Norton, on his return. Meantime, you had better take Barnaby back to his Greek and Latin and mathematics.”

“We’ve been discussing that very thing,” said Brayton, “and that is about our conclusion. For my own part, I do not feel justified in remaining away from my duties an hour longer than is necessary.”

[Pg 380]“I put the various law papers required in course of preparation, to-day,” said the Judge, “and they will be ready for you to sign, so that you can leave the city to-morrow night. As for Bar, he is a minor yet, and all his business can be taken care of for him.”

“I will answer for his family in England,” remarked Ashbel Norton. “We are all entirely satisfied that things should take the shape you indicate. Only there is no need of haste, for, now I am over here, I’d like amazingly to see more of the country.”

“You’ve all our splendid autumn weather before you for that,” replied Dr. Manning. “There’s no better time in all the year. I only wish I could leave my practice and go with you.”

And so it was arranged, but Bar Vernon took the Judge aside before the evening was over, and said:

“But, Judge Danvers, how about Major Montague in all this? I’ve no malice against him, in spite of all he has done. He seemed always to have a sort of liking for me.”

“Or for the money he meant to make out of[Pg 381] you, some day,” replied the Judge. “When he stole you away, he thought he would be sure of a reward for sending you back again.”

“Why didn’t he, then?” asked Bar.

“Well, so far as I can understand it,” said the Judge, “too many of his own misdeeds were coming to light about that time, and he was compelled to remain in hiding till things had blown over a little. Of course he kept you with him and took some kind of care of you. It was all pure selfishness. He seems to be a very bad man.”

“But ought I not to see him?”

“Not now, I think. There is no danger but that we shall be able to find him any time we wish to. We will talk about it one of these days. All I want you to do now is to make a man of yourself as fast as you can. You’ve begun well, from all I can hear. Keep it up.”

“I’ll try,” said Bar. “I think I’ve seen what some things lead to clearly enough.”

“I should say you had,” was the lawyer’s very emphatic rejoinder.

But, while matters were going ahead so very[Pg 382] swimmingly in the great city, there were almost equally busy times in Ogleport.

Val Manning found himself invited, that day, to a private conference with Dr. Dryer. Not for any misdeeds of his own, as he was very carefully assured, but to ascertain what he might know as to the sudden disappearance of his room-mate.

“He did not tell me a word,” said Val, “except that a telegram from his counsel called him back to the city. He could not say when he would return.”

“His counsel? He’s very young to have counsel. Do you mean Judge Danvers?”

“I suppose so,” said Val.

Bar Vernon was growing rapidly to the stature of a very large boy, in the mind of the Academy principal, but he had unwisely, though, perhaps, necessarily, admitted his ruling half to that conference, and Mrs. Dryer broke in with:

“All an excuse, Dr. Dryer. I’m astonished that you allow yourself to be hoodwinked in that way.”

“Dorothy Jane!”

[Pg 383]“Don’t speak to me!” she exclaimed. “Who was it found out all about the bell business? It’s your duty to write at once to Dr. Manning.”

“Yes,” said Val, quietly. “I should be glad to have you do that.”

But Mrs. Dryer had a good deal more to say, and she said it without missing a word, in spite of the Doctor’s frequent attempts to interject ideas of his own.

At last, however, Val was released, to find Zebedee Fuller waiting for him at the gate, while Dr. Dryer was retained a close prisoner in his study until he had actually written that letter to Bar Vernon’s “Guardian.”

“I don’t see what more we can do about it,” said Zeb, as he and Val walked off towards the Academy, for it was at the noon recess. “The bell business has gone all to pieces.”

“I’m half sorry for that,” said Val. “It looks as if it would all have to come out one of these days.”

“It certainly will,” replied Zeb, “unless we can set the Ogleport people to thinking about something else. Even then it’ll be hard to make[Pg 384] Dorothy let up on George. At all events, we mustn’t allow him to suffer.”

“He won’t,” said Val. “She can’t do him a bit of hurt.”

“Still,” said Zeb, “I do wish we had Bar Vernon with us. The man that invented that bell business must be up to other things.”

“Indeed he is,” said Val; “but don’t you be afraid. He’ll turn up here again some fine morning.”

“Sure of that?” exclaimed Zeb. “Then there’s hope for the future of Ogleport yet. There comes old Sol.”

That was a dismal day for the principal, however, and his several male and female subordinates had the “teaching” pretty much in their own hands, such as they were.

“Effie,” said Sibyl Brayton to her friend, as they met on the green, a little before the close of school, “can you keep a secret?”

“Perfectly,” said Effie. “Is it anything comical?”

“It isn’t comical at all,” said Sibyl. “We’ve just had a telegram from my brother George. He and Bar Vernon will be here to-morrow.”

[Pg 385]“He’s caught him?” said Effie, hastily.

“Why, Effie!” exclaimed Sibyl, “Bar didn’t go after George.”

“But didn’t George—I mean Mr. Brayton,” said the blushing Effie, “go after Bar?”

“No,” said Sibyl, “and it’s all a puzzle to me. I don’t understand a bit of it.”

No more did Euphemia, but there were sharp eyes prepared to watch for the early stage from the South next day. They were duly rewarded, too, and George Brayton had plenty of time to tell his mother and sister the news, so that the latter could carry it over to Dr. Dryer’s for Effie’s benefit as soon as she had a good chance that afternoon.

As for George Brayton and Bar, they at once got rid of the dust of travel, and scarcely were the several rooms of the Academy filled, after the noon recess, before Val Manning’s “chum” dropped quietly down into his accustomed seat beside him, while, at the same moment, the assistant-principal resumed the discharge of his own duties, for all the world as if he had not been gone ten minutes.

Dr. Dryer was in another room at the moment,[Pg 386] and when he returned he started as if he had seen a ghost.

“Mr. Brayton?”

“Good-morning, Doctor. Back again, safe and sound, you see. Hope my absence has not occasioned any inconvenience.”

“The departure of even subordinate members of the faculty of this institution,” solemnly responded the principal, “can hardly fail to occasion approximate disturbances of its organization.”

“It’s all right,” muttered Zeb Fuller to himself, in his corner; “only he’ll choke himself with a big word yet, and then what’ll become of Dorothy?”

As for Brayton, he simply said:

“I’m sorry for that, of course, but it couldn’t be helped. Mr. Vernon returned with me.”

“With you?”

“Yes, with me. Had a very pleasant journey together. I met him in the city.”

“Mr. Brayton, may I see you after school? This matter seems to need looking into.”

“Certainly,” said George, as he prepared to go on with his classes, but Zebedee’s face fell.

[Pg 387]“Short words, all of ’em,” he soliloquized. “Must have learned them of Dorothy.”

At another time George Brayton might have showed signs of rebellion, but he saw nothing very dreadful in the idea of going over to Dr. Dryer’s house after school. It may, indeed, have been the very thing he would have asked for.

Bar Vernon attended rigidly to his duties that afternoon, but there was nothing to prevent him from using slate and pencil, and, before school was out, Val Manning had a very fair outline of all Bar had to tell him.

Then, indeed, the latter suddenly discovered what a lion he had become.

As Zeb announced to “the boys,” not only had Bar returned safe and well, but “he has also distinguished himself by bringing back Mr. George Brayton with him. I could have done but little more myself.”

At that very moment, however, the proposed “looking into” George Brayton’s absence was beginning at the house of Dr. Dryer, and never before had the principal tried to look so large, or felt so really insecure about his actual size.

[Pg 388]“Mr. Brayton,” he began, “may I ask where your journey conveyed you?”

“City and back,” said George, curtly. “Business errand, that’s all.”

“May I also venture to inquire as to the object of your journey?” asked the principal, with increasing dignity, while his wife smiled upon him her completest approbation, and Effie’s blue eyes expanded with surprise and indignation.

“Certainly not,” quietly responded Brayton, without the quiver of a nerve.

“You refuse a satisfactory response to my interrogation?” exclaimed the Doctor.

“Why,” said George, “if it isn’t satisfactory it ought to be. The business I went on was my own, not yours. I don’t see why you should take any special interest in it.”

“None of his business?” exclaimed Mrs. Dryer, aghast. “Is that the way you understand your duty to your superior? Perhaps you will say that this, too, is none of his business?”

With that the angry lady plucked from behind the sheltering folds of her dress the remains of Bar Vernon’s tolling machine, and cast it widespread upon the carpet.

[Pg 389]“What’s that?” asked Brayton, with a mild look of curiosity.

“That, sir,” said the Doctor, severely, “is the part of our philosophical apparatus which you have basely deflected from its proper uses for the alarm and disturbance of this peaceful community.”

“Dr. Dryer,” said Brayton, as he struggled to suppress a laugh, “has Ogleport gone crazy since last Monday morning, or are you the only sufferer?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“Please tell me, Doctor, where did you find that thing, and what is it?”

“Find it?” exclaimed Mrs. Dryer. “I found it myself up in the steeple, where it was tolling the bell.”

“Tolling the bell!”

“Yes, sir, that and the wind, just as you meant it should. Do you suppose the Ogleport Academy supplies philosophical apparatus for tolling bells with?”

George Brayton’s face had been getting redder and redder, and Euphemia’s handkerchief was not at her eyes, by any means, but he managed to stammer out:

[Pg 390]“Have you asked Zeb Fuller about it?”

There was a sort of magic in the mention of that name, at least, to anybody in Ogleport, and it suddenly occurred to Mrs. Dryer that it was, indeed, from Zeb that her suspicions—information she had deemed it—had been derived, and at the same moment the Doctor himself began to wrestle with a new idea.

“Dorothy Jane,” he remarked, “I begin to fear that——”

But Effie had restrained her mirth as long as was in any way possible, and George Brayton permitted himself to catch the infection of it very freely.

“Dr. Dryer,” he said, as soon as he could speak plainly again, “this must, indeed, be looked into; but we had better take our time at it. Other hands than Zeb’s have been at work on that affair. Mrs. Dryer deserves great credit for detecting it. I will come over again after tea, and she must tell me all about it. Just now I can’t stay any longer.”

The Doctor and his wife sat and looked each other in the face in mute astonishment as the young man rose and walked to the parlor-door.

[Pg 391]They did not even breathe a word to Effie as she merrily followed him, and so they did not hear a syllable of what passed between those two in the outer hallway.

Nobody else did, but it seemed to interest them very much.

Indeed, as Brayton was compelled to whisper a part of it, he was also forced to lean his face very close to Euphemia’s in a way which would surely have caused Zebedee Fuller to say, had he been at hand:

“Dorothy would hardly approve of that, but I do.”

Alas, for Dorothy Jane!

For once in their wedded life the Doctor himself was now able to turn upon her with:

“I told you so. Now, if he lets it out we shall have all Ogleport laughing at us.”

And that was just what Mrs. Dryer dreaded of all things in the world, for the Dorcas Society was to meet at her house the very next day.

One consequence, however, was that when George Brayton “came over after tea,” he found that an important errand had called away his venerable superior, and that Mrs. Dryer was[Pg 392] confined to her own room by a headache or something, leaving poor Euphemia to do the honors of the house all alone.

So she did them.

“Barnaby,” said Mrs. Brayton to our hero, that evening, “George tells me you agree with him that the less we say about this English matter the better.”

“For the present, yes,” said Bar, “but such things always leak out after a while. I’d rather keep quiet as long as I can.”

“And are you not a sort of a cousin of ours now?” asked Sibyl.

“I wish you’d let it be so,” said Bar, “for I have no American cousins, that I know of.”

“Perhaps they may turn up one of these days,” said Mrs. Brayton. “Anyhow, the Vernon estate, your father’s and mother’s, has done enough for us, and I’ll be glad enough to play aunt for you. Indeed, I’ll be as much of a mother to you as I can.”

“Cousins are better than sisters,” said Sibyl. “Don’t you think so, Bar?”

“Perhaps,” replied Bar. “I never had either, and so I don’t know.”

[Pg 393]“You shall call me either one then, just as you please,” exclaimed Sibyl; “but I can’t give you my mother.”

“She is to be my aunt, then!” said Bar. “Well, that’ll do splendidly.”

When Bar and Val reached their room at last that night, there was nothing for it but to go over the whole ground.

“It’s grand,” was Val’s enthusiastic commentary. “You’re a regular hero of romance. But I’m ever so glad you’re not to leave Ogleport this year. Won’t we have good times! You’ll have loads of pocket-money, of course, and I always get plenty. Oh, won’t we have fun, that’s all!”

There did indeed seem to be a very fair prospect of it, and Bar Vernon’s “old time” seemed to be drifting further and further away from him, while the present and the future, the “new time” concerning which he had hoped so much, and for which he had struck out so boldly, grew brighter and more real to him every hour.

George Brayton must have required a good deal of advice that evening, but his mother reproved him very gently indeed for his prolonged call at the Doctor’s.

[Pg 394]It may, or may not be, that George deemed it his duty to report as to the absence of the Doctor and his wife, but it’s just as likely he did not.

Zebedee Fuller and his dog Bob were out by the side of the little river that night, for another raid on the eels; but, although their usual good fortune attended them, the brow of the young village-leader was clouded.

“He’s back again, Bob,” remarked Zebedee, as a larger eel than common tangled himself up with the line on the grass. “That young man I told you of is back again, and he’s brought back George with him. Now, George’ll have enough to do looking out for Dorothy while he courts Euphemia, but what are Gershom Todderley and you and I to do with Bar Vernon? We can’t afford to let him be idle. No, Bob, he must improve his time. Oh! how I wish Dorothy Jane had all those eels in her lap, or, say, in her pocket, and was reaching down for her spectacles just now. There are many comforts we can’t have in this world, Bob, and that’s one of ’em. But between me and you and old Sol, we’ll find work for Barnaby Vernon this term, sure!”

THE END