“Because it will prevent your grandfather buying me a new one.”
“That he would buy a new one for himself, and have his best suit cut down for me.”
“I think so myself,” assented Grant with a smile.
“You’d better take mine than his. Grandfather isn’t much like a dude in dress.”
“No; he tells me that I dress as well as he.”
“So you do, nearly. However, it does not make much difference how an old man like him dresses.”
Rodney rather approved of his grandfather’s scanty outlay on dress, for it would enable him to leave more money to his mother and himself.
“Do you know how old grandfather is?” asked Rodney.
“That’s pretty old. He won’t live many years longer probably. Then the property will come to mother and me.”
“Not much. Mother says she’ll sell both farms, and then we may go to Chicago to live.”
Grant did not like Mr. Tarbox, but he was rather disgusted to hear his grandson speculate so coolly about his death.
“Don’t you think grandfather is failing?” continued Rodney.
“I don’t know that he is,” answered Grant coldly.
“Mother thinks he’s got kidney disease. Old men are very apt to have that trouble.”
“I never heard him complain of being sick.”
By this time the two boys had reached the village.
“I think I’ll drop into the drug store,” said Rodney. “They keep cigarettes there, don’t they?”
“Mother don’t like me to smoke, but I do it on the sly. I’ll give you a cigarette, if you want one,” he said, in an unusual fit of generosity.
“It’s just as well, for you are poor and couldn’t afford to buy cigarettes. Well, I suppose you’ve got to go on.”
So the two boys parted. Rodney entered the drug store, and not only bought a package of cigarettes, but drank a glass of soda water. It did not occur to him to offer Grant soda water, for that would have cost a nickel, while a cigarette was inexpensive.
“Somehow I don’t like Rodney,” said Grant to himself as he walked along. “He seems anxious to have his grandfather die in order to get hold of the property. I wouldn’t want to feel that way about anybody, though money would be very acceptable.”
Grant walked a mile farther till he reached the farm. Luke Weldon, who had taken it on shares, was in the yard.
“Well, Grant, have you come to see me?” he asked with a good-natured smile.