The storekeeper's man witnessed our parting, and that kept me on my dignity; but when the pair of them were out of sight, I felt I had lost a friend, and had many cares upon my shoulders. Driving back alone through the bush with our stores, I made some fine resolutions. I was now in my twelfth year, and very nearly a man, I told myself. It would be my business to keep our home in order, to take particularly good care of my father, and to see that he was as comfortable as I could make him. Certainly, I was a very serious-minded youngster; and it did not make me less serious to find when I got back to the Livorno that my father was lying in his bunk in some pain, and, as I knew at first glance, very much depressed. He had strained or hurt himself in some way in cutting firewood.
'You oughtn't to have done it, you know, father,' I remember saying, very much as a nurse or parent might have said it. 'We've plenty stacked in the main hatch, and you know the wood's my job.'
He smiled sadly. 'I'm not quite sure that there's any work here that doesn't seem to be your "job," old fellow,' he said. 'At least, if any of it's mine, it must be a kind that's sadly neglected.'
'Well, but, father, you have more important things; you have your writing. The little outside jobs are mine, of course. I've learned it all from Ted. You really must trust me for that, father.'
'Ah, well, you're a good lad, Nick; and we must see if I cannot set to seriously in the matter of doing some of this writing you talk of. It's high time; and it may be easier now we are alone. No, I don't think I'll get up to supper this evening, Nick. I'm not very well, to tell the truth, and a quiet night's rest here will be best for me.'
We had a few fowls then in a little bush run, and I presently had a new-laid egg beaten up for my patient. This he took to oblige me; but his 'quiet night's rest' did not amount to much, for each time I waked through the night I knew, either by the light burning beside him, or by some slight movement he made, that my father was awake.
VI
In this completely solitary way we lived for some eight months after Ted left us. There were times when my father seemed cheery and in much better health. In such periods he would concern himself a good deal in the matter of my education.
'It may never be so valuable to you as Ted's "eddication,"' he said; 'but a gentleman should have some acquaintance with the classics, Nick, both in our tongue (the nobility of which is not near so well understood as it might be) and in the tongues of the ancients.'
Once he said: 'We have lived our own Odyssey, old fellow, without writing it; but I'd like you to be able to read Homer's.'