It was here that St. George had raised his head, his heart in his mouth.
“How do you know, Todd?” he asked in a serious tone. He had long since ceased correcting Todd for his oustpoken reflections on Kate's suitor as a useless expenditure of time.
“'Cause Mammy Henny done tol' Aunt Jemima so--an' she purty nigh cried her eyes out when she said it. Ye ain't heared nothin' 'bout Marse Harry comin' home, is ye?”
“No--not a word--not for many months, Todd. He's up in the mountains, so his mother tells me.”
Whereupon Todd had gulped down an imprecation expressive of his feelings and had gone about his duties, while St. George had buried himself in his easy-chair, his eyes fixed on vacancy, his soul all the more a-hungered for the boy he loved. He wondered where the lad was--why he hadn't written. Whether the fever had overtaken him and he laid up in some filthy hospital. Almost every week his mother had either come herself or sent in for news, accompanied by messages expressing some new phase of her anxiety. Or had he grown and broadened out and become big and strong?--whom had he met, and how had they treated him?--and would he want to leave home again when once he came back? Then, as always, there came a feeling of intense relief. He thanked God that Harry WASN'T at home; a daily witness of the shrinkage of his resources and the shifts to which he was being put. This would be ten times worse for him to bear than the loss of the boy's companionship. Harry would then upbraid him for the sacrifices he had made for him, as if he would not take every step over again! Take them!--of course he would take them!--so would any other gentleman. Not to have come to Harry's rescue in that the most critical hour of his life, when he was disowned by his father, rejected by his sweetheart, and hounded by creditors, not one of whom did he justly owe, was unthinkable, absolutely unthinkable, and not worth a moment's consideration.
And so he would sit and muse, his head in his hand, his well-rounded legs stretched toward the fire, his white, shapely fingers tapping the arms of his chair--each click so many telegraphic records of the workings of his mind.
With the closing in of the autumn and the coming of the first winter cold, the denizens of Kennedy Square gave themselves over to the season's entertainments. Mrs. Cheston, as was her usual custom, issued invitations for a ball--this one in honor of the officers who had distinguished themselves in the Mexican War. Major Clayton, Bowdoin, the Murdochs, Stirlings, and Howards--all persons of the highest quality--inaugurated a series of chess tournaments, the several players and those who came to look on to be thereafter comforted with such toothsome solids as wild turkey, terrapin, and olio, and such delectable liquids as were stored in the cellars of their hosts. Old Judge Pancoast, yielding to the general demand, gave an oyster roast--his enormous kitchen being the place of all others for such a function. On this occasion two long wooden tables were scoured to an unprecedented whiteness--the young girls in white aprons and the young men in white jackets serving as waiters--and laid with wooden plates, and two big wooden bowls--one for the hot, sizzling shells just off their bed of hickory coals banked on the kitchen hearth, and the other for the empty ones--the fun continuing until the wee sma' hours of the morning.