第48章

"That Mr.Major officer man was 'stonished when I called you 'Uncle Jed,'" she observed."Why, do you s'pose?"Jed whistled a few bars and peered over the side at the seaweed marking the border of the narrow, shallow channel.

"I cal'late," he drawled, after a moment, "that he hadn't noticed how much we look alike."It was Barbara's turn to be astonished.

"But we DON'T look alike, Uncle Jed," she declared."Not a single bit."Jed nodded."No-o," he admitted."I presume that's why he didn't notice it."This explanation, which other people might have found somewhat unsatisfactory, appeared to satisfy Miss Armstrong; at any rate she accepted it without comment.There was another pause in the conversation.Then she said:

"I don't know, after all, as I ought to call you 'Uncle Jed,' Uncle Jed.""Eh? Why not, for the land sakes?"

"'Cause uncles make people cry in our family.I heard Mamma crying last night, after she thought I was asleep.And I know she was crying about Uncle Charlie.She cried when they took him away, you know, and now she cries when he's coming home again.She cried awf'ly when they took him away.""Oh, she did, eh?"

"Yes.He used to live with Mamma and me at our house in Middleford.He's awful nice, Uncle Charlie is, and Petunia and Iwere very fond of him.And then they took him away and we haven't seen him since.""He's been sick, maybe."

"Perhaps so.But he must be well again now cause he's coming home;Mamma said so."

"Um-hm.Well, I guess that was it.Probably he had to go to the--the hospital or somewhere and your ma has been worried about him.

He's had an operation maybe.Lots of folks have operations nowadays; it's got to be the fashion, seems so."The child reflected.

"Do they have to have policemen come to take you to the hospital?"she asked.

"Eh?...Policemen?"

"Yes.'Twas two big policemen took Uncle Charlie away the first time.We were having supper, Mamma and he and I, and Nora went to the door when the bell rang and the big policemen came and Uncle Charlie went away with them.And Mamma cried so.And she wouldn't tell me a bit about....Oh! OH! I've told about the policemen!

Mamma said I mustn't ever, EVER tell anybody that.And--and I did!

I DID!"

Aghast at her own depravity, she began to sob.Jed tried to comfort her and succeeded, after a fashion, at least she stopped crying, although she was silent most of the way home.And Jed himself was silent also.He shared her feeling of guilt.He felt that he had been told something which neither he nor any outsider should have heard, and his sensitive spirit found little consolation in the fact that the hearing of it had come through no fault of his.Besides, he was not so sure that he had been faultless.He had permitted the child's disclosures to go on when, perhaps, he should have stopped them.By the time the "Araminta's"nose slid up on the sloping beach at the foot of the bluff before the Winslow place she held two conscience-stricken culprits instead of one.

And if Ruth Armstrong slept but little that night, as her daughter said had been the case the night before, she was not the only wakeful person in that part of Orham.She would have been surprised if she had known that her eccentric neighbor and landlord was also lying awake and that his thoughts were of her and her trouble.For Jed, although he had heard but the barest fragment of the story of "Uncle Charlie," a mere hint dropped from the lips of a child who did not understand the meaning of what she said, had heard enough to make plain to him that the secret which the young widow was hiding from the world was a secret involving sorrow and heartbreak for herself and shame and disgrace for others.The details he did not know, nor did he wish to know them; he was entirely devoid of that sort of curiosity.Possession of the little knowledge which had been given him, or, rather, had been thrust upon him, and which Gabe Bearse would have considered a gossip treasure trove, a promise of greater treasures to be diligently mined, to Jed was a miserable, culpable thing, like the custody of stolen property.He felt wicked and mean, as if he had been caught peeping under a window shade.