It was a lie, Howard knew, but that did not trouble him, and calling Sam, he bade him take it with the chair and a bunch of hothouse roses to Miss Smith.  Sam took the chair and the note and the roses, and started for Mrs. Biggs’s, stopping in the avenue to look at the shrub where Brutus had received the gouge in his shoulder, and stopping again at a point where some bits of glass from the broken window of the carriage were lying.  All this took time, so that it was after eleven when he at last reached Mrs. Biggs’s gate, and met a drayman coming in an opposite direction with Jack Harcourt on the cart, seated in a very handsome wheel chair, and looking supremely happy.

Jack had been very busy all the morning visiting furniture stores and inquiring for wheel chairs, which he found were not very common.  Indeed, there were only three in the town, and one of these had been sent from Boston for the approval of Col.  Crompton when his rheumatic gout prevented him from walking.  Something about it had not suited him, and it had remained with the furniture dealer, who, glad of a purchaser, had offered it to Jack for nearly half the original price.  Jack did not care for the cost if the chair was what he wanted.  It was upholstered with leather, both the seat and the back, and could be easily propelled from room to room by Eloise herself, while Jack thought it quite likely that he should himself some day take her out for an airing, possibly to the school-house, which he had passed on his way to the village.  There was a shorter road through the meadows and woods than the one past the school-house, but Jack took the latter, hoping he might see Tom Walker again, in which case he meant to interview him.  Nor was he disappointed, for sauntering in the same direction and chewing gum, with his cap on the back of his head and his hands in his pockets, was a tall, wiry fellow, whom Jack instantly spotted as Tom Walker, the bully, who was to terrorize Eloise.

“Now is my time,” Jack thought, hastening his steps and soon overtaking the boy, who, never caring whether he was late or early at school, was taking his time, and stopping occasionally to throw a stone at some bird on the fence or a tree.  “Hallo, Tom!” Jack said in his cheery way as he came up with the boy, whose ungracious answer was, “How do you know my name is Tom?”

At heart Tom was something of an anarchist, jealous of and disliking people higher in the social scale than he was, and this dislike extended particularly to the young gentlemen from the Crompton House, who had nothing to do but to enjoy themselves.  He did not like to be patronized, but there was something in Jack’s voice which made him accompany his speech with a laugh, which robbed it of some of its rudeness.

“Oh, I know you, just as, I dare say, you know me, Jack Harcourt, from New York, visiting at present at the Crompton House,” was Jack’s reply, which mollified Tom at once.

If Jack had called himself Mr. Harcourt Tom would have resented it as airs.  But he didn’t; he said Jack, putting himself on a par with the boy, who took the gum from his mouth for a moment, looked at it, replaced it, and began to answer Jack’s questions, which at first were very far from Eloise.  But they struck her at last as they drew near the school-house.