"Hardly," answered Becky; "he's used to that."
"Not if he likes you; and you might go further and fare worse."
"Well, I MUST say!" Becky exclaimed, with a laugh; "you'd like
to see me stuck in that hollow, out of your way!"
"It's a good farm, I've heard," said the other.
"Yes, and covered with as much as it'll bear!"
Here the girls were called away to the dance. Jacob slowly walked
up the dewy meadow, the sounds of fiddling, singing, and laughter
growing fainter behind him.
"My journey!" he repeated to himself,--" my journey! why shouldn't
I start on it now? Start off, and never come back?"
It was a very little thing, after all, which annoyed him, but the
mention of it always touched a sore nerve of his nature. A dozen
years before, when a boy at school, he had made a temporary
friendship with another boy of his age, and had one day said
to the latter, in the warmth of his first generous confidence:
"When I am a little older, I shall make a great journey, and come
back rich, and buy Whitney's place!"
Now, Whitney's place, with its stately old brick mansion, its
avenue of silver firs, and its two hundred acres of clean, warm-
lying land, was the finest, the most aristocratic property in all
the neighborhood, and the boy-friend could not resist the
temptation of repeating Jacob's grand design, for the endless
amusement of the school.
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