“I think, dad,” said Sam, “that the best thing for you to do is to get out of here to-night before you’re seen. I’ve some heavy new boots that you can wear and you can have my raincoat and sou’wester. That’s my advice—hit the trail to-night and get so far out of the way that none of your old neighbors will meet you. Settle in some live town over the mountain; put mother in a nice, light, little house—and whatever you do, don’t have green shades to the windows—and maybe she’ll get well again.”
“She’s better now,” said Mr. Disbrow. “Fifty percent better. But of course she looks with contempt on me. I don’t know whether she’ll let me go back to her or not, Sam.”
“Mother!” cried Sam. “Of course she will! You go back and don’t take no for an answer. You-all just hike over the mountain to a new place and get a new start all ’round. And one of the first things is to get Hannah’s eyes straightened. She can’t enjoy herself the way she is. It just spoils her life.”
“Yes, it does, Mr. Disbrow,” put in Azalea. “It makes her so shy that it’s terrible for her. Do say you’ll have her eyes made right.”
Disbrow looked up at Azalea with something almost like a smile. She was bending forward pleading with him, her own odd, intense look on her face. She did indeed seem to have a way of understanding the troubles of people.
“I’ll do it, miss,” he said, “and I’ll tell Hannah you-all told me to.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, then Mr. Disbrow turned his eyes on Sam and a deep flush spread over his face.
“It’s all right for you to say you’ll stand by me, son,” he said, “but if I go sneakin’ off and hidin’ away, how am I going to be able to stand by you? What will ’come of you, anyway?”
“Now don’t worry about me, sir,” Sam said independently; “I’ll get on somehow.”
“Oh, it’s going to be easy for Sam,” Annie Laurie broke in enthusiastically. “You see it’s this way. Now I have my money I’ll be able to pay for all the work he’s been doing for me, and he’ll keep right on working and saving up his money, and next October he’ll go back to the Rutherford Academy. It’s not so far away but that he can afford to run down here every week or two to go over the books, and he’ll get some good man in to take his place while he’s away. Vacations, he can take charge himself. Oh, we’ll get on now, Mr. Disbrow, both Sam and I, and we’ll have plenty of schooling too.”