David Harum

him that he could not imagine its ever being otherwise in Homeville. It was a year since the world⁠—his world⁠—had come to an end, and though his sensations of loss and defeat had passed the acute stage, his mind was far from healthy. He had evaded David’s question, or only half answered it, when he merely replied that the rector had called upon him. The truth was that some tentative advances had been made to him, and Mr. Euston had presented him to a few of the people in his flock; but beyond the point of mere politeness he had made no response, mainly from indifference, but to a degree because of a suspicion that his connection with Mr. Harum would not, to say the least, enhance his position in the minds of certain of the people of Homeville. As has been intimated, it seemed at the outset of his career in the village as if there had been a combination of circumstance and effort to put him on his guard, and, indeed, rather to prejudice him against his employer; and Mr. Harum, as it now appeared to our friend, had on one or two occasions laid himself open to misjudgment, if no more. No allusion had ever been made to the episode of the counterfeit money by either his employer or himself, and it was not till months afterward that the subject was brought up by Mr. Richard Larrabee, who sauntered into the bank one morning. Finding no one there but John, he leaned over the counter on his elbows, and, twisting one leg about the other in a restful attitude, proceeded to open up a conversation upon various topics of interest to his mind. Dick was Mr. Harum’s confidential henchman and factotum, although not regularly so employed. His chief object in life was apparently to get as much amusement as possible out of that experience, and he was quite unhampered by overnice notions of delicacy or bashfulness. But, withal, Mr. Larrabee was a very honest and loyal person, strong in his likes and dislikes, devoted to David, for whom he had the greatest admiration, and he had taken a fancy to our friend, stoutly maintaining that he “wa’n’t no more stuck-up ’n you be,” only, as he remarked to Bill Perkins, “he hain’t had the advantigis of your bringin’ up.”

After some preliminary talk⁠—“Say,” he said to John, “got stuck with any more countyfit money lately?”

John’s face reddened a little and Dick laughed.

“The old man told me about it,” he said. “Say, you’d ought to done as he told ye to. You’d ’a’ saved fifteen dollars,” Dick declared, looking at our friend with an expression of the utmost amusement.

“I don’t quite understand,” said John rather stiffly.

“Didn’t he tell ye to charge ’em up to the bank, an’ let him take ’em?” asked Dick.

“Well?” said John shortly.

“Oh, yes, I know,” said Mr. Larrabee. “He said sumpthin’ to make you think he was goin’ to pass ’em out, an’ you didn’t give him no show to explain, but jest marched into the back room an’ stuck ’em onto the fire. Ho, ho, ho, ho! He told me all about it,” cried Dick. “Say,” he declared, “I dunno ’s I ever see the old man more kind o’ womble-cropped over anythin’. Why, he wouldn’t no more ’a’ passed them bills ’n he’d ’a’ cut his hand off. He, he, he, he! He was jest ticklin’ your heels a little,” said Mr. Larrabee, “to see if you’d kick, an’,” chuckled the speaker, “you surely did.”

“Perhaps I acted rather hastily,” said John, laughing a little from contagion.

“Wa’al,” said Dick, “Dave’s got ways of his own. I’ve summered an’ wintered with him now for a good many years, an’ I ain’t got to the bottom of him yet, an’,” he added, “I don’t know nobody that has.”

XXIX

Although, as time went on and John had come to a better insight of the character of the eccentric person whom Dick had failed to fathom, his half-formed prejudices had fallen away, it must be admitted that he ofttimes found him a good deal of a puzzle. The domains of the serious and the facetious in David’s mind seemed to have no very well defined boundaries.

The talk had drifted back to the people and gossip of Homeville, but, sooth to say, it had not on this occasion got far away from those topics.

“Yes,” said Mr. Harum, “Alf Verjoos is on the hull the best off of any of the lot. As I told ye, he made money on top of what the old man left him, an’ he married money. The fam’ly⁠—some on ’em⁠—comes here in the summer, an’ he’s here part o’ the time gen’ally, but the women folks won’t stay here winters, an’ the house is left in care of Alf’s sister who never got married. He don’t care a hill o’ white beans fer anything in Homeville but the old place, and he don’t cal’late to have nobody on his grass, not if he knows it. Him an’ me are on putty friendly terms, but the fact is,” said David, in a semi-confidential tone, “he’s about an even combine of pykery an’ viniger, an’ about as pop’lar in gen’ral ’round here as a skunk in a henhouse; but Mis’ Verjoos is putty well liked; an’ one o’ the girls, Claricy is her name, is a good deal of a fav’rit. Juliet, the other one, don’t mix with the village folks much, an’ sometimes don’t come with the fam’ly at all. She favors her father,” remarked the historian.

“Inherits his popularity, I conclude,” remarked John, smiling.

“She does favor him to some extent in that respect,” was the reply; “an’ she’s dark complected like him, but she’s a mighty han’some girl, notwithstandin’. Both on ’em is han’some girls,” observed Mr. Harum, “an’ great fer hosses, an’ that’s the way I got ’quainted with ’em. They’re all fer ridin’ hossback when they’re up here.