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Jerome: a Poor Man: Edwards

Doctor Prescott had held a thousand-dollar mortgage upon the Edwards house for years. Jerome had always a fancy of it as a huge black bird with hissing back perched upon the ridge-pole.

The old white horse coming home, turning out at the beck of a phantom driver for the bad places in the country road, was met upon his arrival at the Edwards cottage with wild shrieks in a woman's voice, a child's frightened, sob, and a boy's sober answer to the eager questions of a small mob of men and boys following after.

There was an immediate rush to the wood-lot, but Jerome had reached the spot the first of all. On the shore of a black pool of water, reputed among the boys to be bottomless, he found his father's hat. Jerome weighted it with stones and flung it in. Then he bolted for home by another route. "Let 'em say father drowned himself now," he gasped out as he ran. Abel Edwards had been missing two years when Jerome, studying the situation day and night knew the truth: They could never, although they half starved themselves, meet the interest of the mortgage. He made a plan. He went to consult squire Eben Merritt. The squire was a notable hunter and fisher and had been bent that morning upon a fishing excursion. He was the kindest man in the place, not rich as had been his ancestors, but lived as a rich man, being possessed of generosity which is the real Horn of Plenty. Jerome looked straight at the squire and made his little speech. He had rehearsed it often. When he had finished, the squire burst into a great roar of laughter and caught the boy by the shoulder. "You don't mean you planned this all yourself?" "Yes, sir. I've been layin' awake nights, plannin'." "How old are you?" "Twelve, sir." "By Jove!"

Then a lovely, gentle little girl stole into the room. Her dimpled arms and neck were bare and her shower of gold curls fell to her waist. She wore a frock of soft blue below which showed the finest starched pantalets and little blue Morocco shoes. The squire turned and caught her up, and she sat on one shoulder, with his golden beard spreading over her blue skirt. The squire told Jerome to call on Doctor Prescott and show his plan. A small, dark, very kind, and quick lady, who was the squire's wife and Lucina's mother, showed Jerome the door, and he went down the street in a daze. Jerome almost forgot the important paper he carried. He had never seen a little girl like Lucina Merritt.