And worst of all, underneath it was a consciousness that Grant was
right in distrusting him. He had neglected him; he had said, "I
guess they're getting along all right." He had put them behind him
when the invitation to spend summer on the Mediterranean or in
the Adirondacks came.
"What can I do? What can I do?" he groaned.
The sheep nibbled the grass near him, the jays called pertly,
"Shame, shame," a quail piped somewhere on the hillside, and the
brook sung a soft, soothing melody that took away at last the sharp
edge of his pain, and he sat up and gazed down the valley, bright
with the sun and apparently filled with happy and prosperous
people.
Suddenly a thought seized him. He stood up so suddenly the sheep
fled in affright. He leaped the brook, crossed the flat, and began
searching in the bushes on the hillside. "Hurrah!" he said with a
smile.
He had found an old road which he used to travel when a boy-a
road that skirted the edge of the valley, now grown up to brush, but
still passable for footmen. As he ran lightly along down the
beautiful path, under oaks and hickories, past masses of poison
ivy, under hanging grapevines, through clumps of splendid
hazelnut bushes loaded with great sticky, rough, green burrs, his
heart threw off part of its load.
Pages:
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118