The Project Gutenberg EBook of David Malcolm, by Nelson Lloyd

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Title: David Malcolm

Author: Nelson Lloyd

Release Date: December 5, 2007 [EBook #23741]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAVID MALCOLM ***

Produced by Al Haines

DAVID MALCOLM

BY

NELSON LLOYD

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

NEW YORK

1913

COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published August, 1913

TO

THE RARE, SWEET MEMORY OF

SUSANNE LIVINGSTON GREEN LLOYD

MY WIFE AND THE DEAR COMPANION

WHO WORKED

WITH ME OVER THESE PAGES

DAVID MALCOLM

CHAPTER I

"Take care not to tumble into the water, David," said my mother.

She was standing by the gate, and from my perch on the back of the
off-wheeler, I smiled down on her with boyish self-assurance. The idea
of my tumbling into the water! The idea of my drowning even did I meet
with so ludicrous a mishap! But I was accustomed to my mother's
anxious care, for as an only child there had fallen to me a double
portion of maternal solicitude. In moments of stress and pain it came
as a grateful balm; yet more often, as now, it was irritating to my
growing sense of self-reliance. To show how little I heeded her
admonition, how well able I was to take care of myself, as I smiled
loftily from my dangerous perch, with my legs hardly straddling the
horse's back, I disdained to secure myself by holding to the harness,
but folded my arms with the nonchalance of a circus rider.

"And, David, be careful about rattlesnakes," said my mother.

Had I not seen in her anxious eyes a menace against all my plans for
that day I should have laughed outright in scorn, but knowing it never
wise to pit my own daring against a mother's prudence, I returned
meekly, "Yessem." Then I gave the horse a surreptitious kick, trying
thus to set all the ponderous four in motion. The unsympathetic animal
would not move in obedience to my command. Instead, he shook himself
vigorously, so that I had to seize the harness to save myself from an
ignominious tumble into the road.

"You won't let David wander out of your sight, now, will you