“I think that, with your arm, I might reach even the tree beyond.”
“Then, suppose that we pay a visit to old Aylmer!”
Robin laughed aloud at the idea. “Why, my dear mother, neither you nor I have strength to go one quarter of that distance; I fear that I must delay that visit for some time to come.”
“There is nothing like trying,” replied Mrs. Peters gaily; and they proceeded a little way together.
“Is it not strange?—I am weary already,” said the youth.
“Then we will rest in this cottage for a little.”
“It was empty before my illness; if there is any one in it now, a patient just recovered from the scarlet fever might not be made very welcome.”
“Oh, you will be made welcome here, I can answer for that,” cried Mrs. Peters; and at that moment who should come tottering from the door, joy overspreading his aged face, his eyes glistening with tears of pleasure and affection, but Robin’s poor old friend! He grasped the youth’s hand in both his own, and blessed God fervently for letting him see the face of his “dear boy” once more!
“But how is this?” exclaimed Robin, with joyful surprise.
The deaf man rather read the question in Robin’s eyes than caught the sense of it from words which he scarcely could hear. “Dr. Merton—bless him!—has brought me here, and has promised to care for the poor old man: and he bade me tell you”—Aylmer paused, and pressed his hand upon his wrinkled forehead, for his powers of memory were almost gone—“he bade me tell you that these comforts I owed to you. I can’t recollect all that he said, but I know very well that he ended with the words, ‘Thine own friend, and thy father’s friend, forsake not.’”