She brought me a little album open at the face of a young man. Carin, darling, when I looked at it, I knew it was the face of my father. It was like my own face, only a man’s and bolder. And yet, so like!
“My father!” I said. “I never saw his face before.”
“It is wonderfully like your own,” said Mr. Knox. “And now you must call me your Uncle David, Azalea; and you must call my dear wife your Aunt Lorena. Remember, you must never feel lonely any more.”
Then I suddenly thought of Mother McBirney waiting for me, and watching and watching the road, and praying and wondering, and I cried out:
“Oh, my dear Mother McBirney! I can never leave her—never!”
“But someone else has a claim on you now,” said my Uncle David. Carin, think of having a right really to write that: “My Uncle David!”
“Yes, I know, but—”
“I do not mean your Aunt Lorena and myself,” he said. “I mean that you have a grandmother and that it will be the happiest hour of her old age when she takes the daughter of her favorite son in her arms.”
“Not a grandmother? A grandmother of my own?”
“Indeed you have, and a very wonderful and proud old lady she is. The grief of her life was the waywardness of her son. She cannot realize that he is dead. We have to watch her lest she steal out to meet him in secret as she did in the old days when his father turned him from home. She used to creep from the house to meet him and to take him money, for she lived in the light of his handsome countenance. So it is your duty, Azalea, to go to her.”