David was silent for a moment in embarrassment, not knowing what to say. “Anybody else would be of just as much help, Mr. Dean,” he said finally.
“Nobody else could be, because I couldn’t feel about anybody else as I do about you, David. Well, I can’t ask you to stay on and be a schoolboy indefinitely, can I?” Again Mr. Dean paused; he was apparently finding it hard to say something that he had in mind. “I’ve talked with the rector and told him that I shouldn’t come back next year. He was very kind and urged me to reconsider—but I told him no. I’m not so useful as I once was, and I can’t help being aware that in some ways I hamper the administration. So it’s best for St. Timothy’s and for me that I should withdraw.”
“The school will be awfully sorry to lose you, fellows and masters both,” said David.
“I hope they’ll feel a friendly regret, the same that I feel at parting from them. But the step is one that I’ve decided to take. And now the question is, What am I to do with myself? I have enough money to live comfortably. I was wondering, David, if your mother wouldn’t like to take a house in Cambridge or Boston, since you’re to be at Harvard, and take me in as a boarder? I know it’s asking a tremendous lot—to suggest that she undertake the care of a blind man; she mustn’t feel under any obligation to say she’ll do it. But I thought perhaps she might like to be near you; and then there’s your brother Ralph—we might arrange about his education, too. How do you feel about it, David? And how do you think your mother would feel about it?”
“I think she’d feel it was too good to be true!” said David enthusiastically. “Oh, Mr. Dean, I’m sure she’d feel it was the finest thing in the world!”
Mr. Dean could recognize the eager ring in David’s voice even if he could not see the eager sparkle in the boy’s eyes.
“Of course she mightn’t feel so at all,” he said, smiling. “She might not want to move away from the place that had been her home. But if you will sound her on the matter, David, when next you write, I shall be very much obliged.”
“When next I write! I’m going to write to her this minute, Mr. Dean!”
Perhaps the master waited as eagerly as David for her reply. And one morning the boy came to him with a letter.