"You knew when poor Eunice died?" answered Mrs. Gray. "You heard, I suppose, that she was buried by her husband not three months after the fever took him off; and about the baby?"
"No, no, I never heard of it, I was too full of other things. I did not even know that your husband was gone, till a man up yonder called you the Widow Gray, when I inquired if you lived here. The last news I heard was years ago, when your husband left home and settled here on the Island."
"He died that very year," answered Mrs. Gray, with a gentle fall of her voice; "I have been alone ever since—all but little Robert."
"Little Robert—have you a child, then, Sarah? I did not know that!"
"No, it wasn't my child, poor Eunice left a boy behind her, the dearest, little fellow. I wish you could have seen him when he first came here, a nussing baby, not three months old, so feeble and helpless. In his mother's sickness he hadn't been tended as children ought to be; and he was the palest thinnest little creature. I wasn't much used to babies, but somehow God teaches us a way when we have the will—and no creature ever prayed for knowledge as I did. Sometimes when the little thing fell to sleep, moaning in my arms, it sounded as if it must wake up with its mother in heaven; but good nussing and new milk, warm from the cow, soon brought out its roses and dimples. He grew, I never did see a child grow like him, when he once took a start—and so good-natured too!"
"But now—where is the boy now?" questioned Jacob.
"He was here this forenoon, almost a man grown. You have been away so long, Jacob. He was here and ate his Thanksgiving dinner. A perfect gentleman, too; I declare, I was almost ashamed to kiss him, he's grown so."
"Then you have brought him up on the place?"
"No, Jacob, we never had a gentleman in our family that I ever heard on, so I determined to make one of Robert."