Chapter II: Kenneth and Harry

From the day when Mrs. Stannard took home her sister’s little boy, Charles Harold, or Harry, as he was usually called, she gave him a mother’s care equally with her own son, Kenneth, who was nearly the same age as his cousin, but as unlike him as one boy can be unlike another. “He is his father all over and can’t help it,” Mrs. Stannard would say, as an excuse for Harry’s faults, which, without his father, she would have condoned for the sake of his mother and because of his handsome face and affectionate, winning ways. At a very early age he began to assume an air of superiority over his associates, because of the money left him by his father, who, he said, was a gentleman and not a farmer, and came of a family which never had to work. And Harry wouldn’t work. Why should he? he said, when his board was paid and he was not beholden in any way to the uncle and aunt who cared for him. They could charge what they liked, he didn’t care. He should still have quite a fortune when he was twenty-one, after which he intended to travel and see the world and have a good time generally.

He had a pretty good time as a boy, Kenneth thought, when he stayed in bed till breakfast was ready on cold winter mornings, while he, Kenneth, was up before light, helping his father with the fires and chores, and sometimes hanging out the Monday’s washing for his mother, when the wind was so sharp as to penetrate through her mittens and the thick hood upon her head. Kenneth was decidedly a mother’s boy, an unselfish, helpful boy, doing for every one whatever his hands found to do, and never dreaming that any necessary labor was beneath him. Every dumb beast on the place, from Sorrel, the horse, and the big rooster who ruled the hen-yard, down to the lambs feeding in the sheep pasture, knew him and came at his call as readily as the watch dog, Chance, or the house cat, Fan, with her family of six kittens just opening their eyes, and six more gambolling about the premises and getting their daily rations from the trough Kenneth had scooped out from a log, and into which, morning and night, he always poured a part of old Limeback’s milk. She was the cow set apart for the cats, and Kenneth saw that they had their rights religiously, and bore meekly Harry’s jeers at what he called Ken’s soft-heartedness for dogs and cats and animals generally. Sometime he meant to have a blooded horse and put him on the racecourse with large bets behind him, but as for farm animals, they were like country people, and he hated them, and the only serious quarrel he and Kenneth ever had was when he tied two kittens together by their hind legs and then set a rat terrier belonging to a neighbor to worry them. The dog was dealt a blow with a hoe which sent him yelping home, the little cats were untied, and then Harry had a thrashing such as he never forgot. His lip was cut and swollen, his eyes black for a week, but he bore no malice against Kenneth for the castigation. On the contrary, he rather respected him for it.

“Upon my word, I didn’t s’pose you had so much grit, or could strike so hard; there’s some strength in your big, rough hands. I b’lieve you’ll be a prize fighter yet,” he said good-naturedly, when Kenneth tried to apologize, saying he must have hit harder than he meant to, he was so mad. “Never mind, Ken, I deserved to have my eyes and teeth knocked out. I’m a kind of blackguard anyway,” he added, while the two boys shook hands, and Harry never again tried the experiment of tieing cats together and setting the dog upon them.

He was a very handsome boy, with soft dark eyes and a winsome smile and white hands, which never did any harder work than to run the mower over the lawn, tie up a rose bush or shell peas for his aunt when she was in a hurry. For the rest of the time, when not in school, he read novels mostly, or books of travel and adventure. He had a boat on the pond which he named “Ken” for his cousin, who rarely found time to go out in it, so busy was he with the many duties devolving upon him as a farmer’s son.

Kenneth liked books for the books’ sake, and unlike Harry, was always glad when school commenced and sorry when it ended. Some day he meant to go to the Academy in Millville, and perhaps to the dancing-school opened there every winter, and learn some of the manners which were natural to Harry; then, if he worked hard and saved a great deal, he might possibly go to college, and afterwards study medicine with Dr. Catherin, the famous physician at Rocky Point. It surely must be a grand thing to alleviate pain, only he could never bear to lose a patient and witness the grief of friends. That would be dreadful and unnerve him for days, he thought. Kenneth was very sympathetic, and showed it in every act. Weak as water, Harry said, and laughed when he cried because old blind Roan, who had been in the family for years, broke his legs and had to be shot. He did not look very weak with his broad shoulders and chest and sinewy arms, which could handle Harry as if he were a child.

“Wait till I have been through all the athletic sports in college; then see if I can’t lick you,” Harry said, when a boy of fifteen, he was about to start for Andover, where he was to begin his preparatory course for college and the sports which would enable him to lick his cousin, Kenneth.

His fortune was sufficient to give him Andover and college, for neither of which he cared a straw except as they might advance him in the career he had marked out for himself in the future.

“No more rough farming for me,” he said, on the morning when he was leaving for Andover, forgetting that he had never so much as hoed a row of potatoes or weeded a garden bed, let alone what he called rough farming. “I am going to have a good time after I am through college, and perhaps shall fix up the old house and spend a few weeks there in the summer with some high bloods, whose acquaintance I shall make. That will be a tony thing to do. Or, I may bring a wife there for the summer,—a rich one, if I have any; none of your poor country girls for me. I leave them to you. Maybe I shall fancy that Connie, What’s-her-name?—your father’s ward, you know. How much do you s’pose she’s worth?”

He was sitting on the kitchen table, swinging his legs back and forth and watching Kenneth strapping his trunk by the door, and paying very little attention to him until Connie What’s-her-name was mentioned. Then Kenneth looked up quickly, and said: “Do you mean Connie Elliott? Why, she’s only a little girl, five or six years old, and you are nearly fifteen.”

“Phoo! Nine years’ difference is nothing if you fancy the girl and she has the ready,” Harry replied. “Father was ten years older than mother. It’s the thing to do. But, halloo, there’s Sorrel and the buggy. I s’pose it’s time to go. Good-by, Ken. You are a good sort of fellow after all, and I shall miss you awfully. Good-by, Aunt Mary. You have always been nice to me. I’m sorry I have not been a better boy, more like Ken. Good-by.”

There were tears in his dark eyes as he kissed his Aunt Mary and shook hands with Kenneth, both of whom, under the spell he cast over them, would have forgiven far more than they had to forgive in the handsome boy, who, as long as they could see him, stood up in the buggy and waved his hat and hands to them as they stood watching him in the door, and thinking, not of his faults, but how lonely they should he without him. In Kenneth’s heart there was no feeling of envy. It had always seemed right that the good things should come to Harry and the bad things, if there were any, should come to himself. This arose partly from his unselfishness, and partly because Harry claimed everything as his right. Kenneth would have liked Andover, but as it did not seem within his reach, he was content with the Millville Academy, where he soon became the most popular boy, as well as the first in his class. At the dancing-school, which he attended every Saturday afternoon, he did not succeed quite as well. His movements were a little clumsy, but he learned many things which he had heard Harry say were essential to the manners of a gentleman, and felt himself quite accomplished, though of course not equal to Hal, who always seemed to know the right thing to say and do.

At first there were a few homesick letters from Hal, as he began to find his level and didn’t like it.

“Andover is not what it is cracked up to be,” he wrote to Kenneth. “Some of the fellows don’t know a gentleman when they see him. Think of their trying to make me a fag. Not much! I wish you were here to whale ’em.”

After a few weeks the letters were more cheerful in tone. The boys had found out that he was somebody, and he had made the acquaintance of a real nice chap,—rich, too. He laid great stress on _rich_, as if that were the main thing in favor of Tom Haynes, who lived in Kentucky near where Harry’s father was born.

“He has heard of the Morrises, and knows they are a tip-top family,” he wrote. “A little fast, maybe, as one of them once ran a bowie knife into somebody who called him a liar. But that’s nothing. That shows grit, Tom says, and he knows. We have a long vacation at Christmas and New Year’s, nearly two weeks, and Tom has hinted pretty broadly that he’d like to spend it with me at The 4 Corners. You see, I’ve done some tall bragging about _my house_, the Morris Place, and have spoken of Aunt Mary as the housekeeper, and so on. You know the blacks south are all uncles and aunts, and somehow Tom has got it into his head that Aunt Mary and Uncle Ephraim came from Kentucky with my father, and are like,—well, like his Aunt Dinah and Uncle Sam he talks so much about. I never meant him to think so, for I am not quite a cad; but when I saw that he had the idea, and that because of it he thought more of me and stood for me against the wretches who were going to toss me in a blanket I couldn’t tell him. How could I? He’d like to see the Morris Place, and says he’d have such fine times with sleigh rides and skating and eating Aunt Mary’s _pones_. I wonder what they are! I told him she made No. 1 fried cakes, but I never said a word about _pones_! He has a colored boy at home, who comes into his room every cold morning and makes a fire before he is up, and brushes his clothes and blacks his shoes. My eye! What would he think of that blizzardy north chamber, where we sleep and nearly shake the teeth out of our heads with the cold, as we dress and hurry downstairs to wash in a tin basin and wipe on a roller-towel! No, sir! I could not have him at the farmhouse, and so I had to make up some yarn about Aunt Mary’s having the rheumatism and Uncle Ephraim the gout, and nobody to do anything but a boy, Kenneth! And I honestly believe he thinks you black with the rest, although I never hinted such a thing. Why, you are as white as the driven snow compared to me, a liar and blackguard. But what was there left for me but to lie, and I can do that easy, you know,—that is, I can blarney a fellow till he don’t know whether he is himself or someone else. I blarneyed Tom till he wrote to his mother, who has invited me to spend the holidays at Cedar Bank, and I have accepted. Won’t it be jolly? And, by the way, I wish Uncle Ephraim would add a little to my allowance. Tom thinks me a kind of millionaire, and it won’t do to go empty-handed. I’d like to see you all, of course, but you will keep, and the invitation to Cedar Bank won’t. Give my love to Aunt Mary and kiss her for me, and Uncle Ephraim, too, if he will let you. Give old Chance a pat on the head. I think a good deal of him as a dog. Tom knows about him and the dozen cats,—I think I said two dozens,—who eat out of the trough. He wants to see them awfully. He is nearly as great on cats as you are.

“Very lovingly, your cousin,
“HAL.”

Kenneth read this letter twice, with a swelling in his heart as if it would burst. For himself he did not care, but he did not like to have his father and mother mistaken for darkies. It was humiliating, and it hurt him. He didn’t like the way Harry spoke of the house, as if he were ashamed of it, but more than all he was disappointed. He had anticipated Harry’s coming home, and wanted to show him his standing in the Millville Academy, and to compare notes as to which knew the most of Latin, and to show off his dancing steps and bows, and possibly get Hal to coach him a little, he was so well posted on such matters. Then there were so many things to make Harry’s home coming pleasant. Quantities of walnuts and butternuts and chestnuts, which he had gathered during the autumn, when he had a leisure hour, were ranged in rows on the ball-room floor. The finest clusters of grapes had been wrapped in paper bags, and put away where they would not freeze, for Harry was fond of grapes, and apples, too, and the largest and best of Baldwins and Kings were on the top of the barrels in the cellar ready for him, while over and above all was the present Kenneth had bought for him with money saved from his own rather scanty allowance, a pearl-handled pocket knife with three blades, for which he had given a dollar. There were the soft wool mittens his mother had knit and the skates his father had bought, all waiting for Hal, who was not coming to claim them, and whose friend, Tom Haynes, thought them all negroes and the Morris Place a palace! It was hard, and Kenneth swallowed and winked a good many times before he could force back the tears from his eyes and the lump from his throat.

“Hal does not care for us; he thinks we are dirt, and is ashamed to bring his fine friend here,” he said, as he handed the letter to his mother, who was scarcely less hurt and disappointed. “Yes, he’s ashamed of us,” Kenneth repeated to himself that night, as he went up to the _blizzardy_ north room, which never seemed to him quite so cold as it did now in the light of Harry’s criticism. “’Tis cheerless, that’s a fact,” Kenneth thought, as the wind went screaming past the house, driving before it a cloud of snow, some of which sifted in upon the bare floor through the shaky window. “Yes, ’tis cheerless and cold, and after all I don’t much blame Hal for wanting to go where a nigger makes a fire in the morning before he is up, but, by golly! he needn’t let ’em think father and mother are nigger aunties and uncles, and if I live I’ll show him somebody he nor forty Tom Hayneses won’t be ashamed of! Yes, I will!”

The last words were said sleepily, for Kenneth’s head was on the pillow, and his last glimmer of consciousness was that he was to make something of himself of which his cousin would not be ashamed.