"I didn't let him room in your part of the house; that is to say, not sleep
there; but I thought, as you was comin' home, and I better be airin' it up
some, anyway, I might as well let him set in the old Judge's room. If you
think it was more than I had a right to do, I'm willin' to pay for it. Git
up!" Bolton turned fully round toward his horses, to hide the workings of
emotion in his face, and shook the reins like a desperate man.
"What _are_ you talking about, Mr. Bolton?" cried Miss Kilburn.
"_Whom_ are you talking about?"
Bolton answered, with a kind of violence, "Mr. Peck; I took him to board,
first off."
"You took him to board?"
"Yes. I know it wa'n't just accordin' to the letter o' the law, and the old
Judge was always pootty p'tic'lah. But I've took care of the place goin'
on twenty years now, and I hain't never had a chick nor a child in it
before. The child," he continued, partly turning his face round again, and
beginning to look Miss Kilburn in the eye, "wa'n't one to touch anything,
anyway, and we kep' her in our part all the while; Mis' Bolton she couldn't
seem to let her out of her sight, she got so fond of her, and she used to
follow me round among the hosses like a kitten. I declare, I _miss_
her."
Bolton's face, the colour of one of the lean ploughed fields of Hatboro',
and deeply furrowed, lighted up with real feeling, which he tried to make
go as far in the work of reconciling Miss Kilburn as if it had been
factitious.
"But I don't understand," she said. "What child are you talking about?"
"Mr. Peck's."
"Was he married?" she asked, with displeasure, she did not know why.
"Well, yes, he _had_ been," answered Bolton. "But she'd be'n in the
asylum ever since the child was born."
"Oh," said Miss Kilburn, with relief; and she fell back upon the seat from
which she had started forward.
Bolton might easily have taken her tone for that of disgust. He faced round
upon her once more. "It was kind of queer, his havin' the child with him,
an' takin' most the care of her himself; and so, as I _say_, Mis'
Bolton and me we took him in, as much to stop folks' mouths as anything,
till they got kinder used to it. But we didn't take him into your part, as
I _say_; and as _I_ say, I'm willin' to pay you whatever you say
for the use of the old Judge's study. I presume that part of it _was_
a libbutty."