Jasper Penny took out from a drawer a tall, narrow ledger, its
calf binding powdering in a yellow dust, with a blurring label,
"Forgebook. Myrtle Forge, 1750." He sat, opening it on the arm of an old
Windsor reading chair he had insisted on retaining among the recent
upholstery, and studied the entries, some written in a small script with
ornamental capitals and red lined day headings, others in an abrupt
manner with heavy down strokes. The latter, he knew, had been made by
his great grandfather, Howat.
"Jonas Rupp charged with three pair of woollen stockings ... shoes for
Minnie." Howat had been young when Minnie's shoes were new; twenty
something--five or six. He must have married not long after.
Howat--like himself--a black Penny. The special interest Jasper Penny
felt for this particular ancestor grew so vivid that he almost felt the
other's presence in the room at his shoulder. He consciously repressed
the desire to turn suddenly and surprise the shadowy and yet clear
figure in the gloom. The features of the youth so long gone, and yet,
too, he felt, the replica of his own young years, were plain; the dark
eyes, slanted brows, the impatient mouth.
His community of sympathy with the other, who was still, in a measure,
himself, was inexplicable; for obviously Howat had escaped Jasper's
blundering--an early marriage, a son, the son whose name, like his
mother's, made such an exotic note in a long, sound succession of
Isabels and Carolines and Gilberts, was a far different tale from his
own.
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