Mr. Alick would smile over them; because they pleased him. He liked to be loved. The preference of any dumb brute was pleasing to him; how much more so then the worship—for it was little less—of this fervent, earnest, enthusiastic little girl?
“How devoted to me the little quiz is, to be sure. Christopher Columbus! if this sort of thing should grow with her growth and strengthen with her strength, what will become of me? Bosh! by the time she is seventeen or eighteen some young prig of a parson will cut me out and there an end.”
And Mr. Alick laughed at the conceit, and thought of the black-eyed girl he had danced with at the last party.
But for all that he could not do without the child’s love or the child’s letters; and he cherished both.
This first year of Drusilla’s life with the Lyon family was a sample of several that followed.
Every Spring the family went to Crowood, taking the housekeeper and her child and all the servants with them; and Drusilla renewed her acquaintance with woods and fields and streams; and increased her knowledge of plants, poultry, cows, and animate and inanimate nature generally, from personal observation.
Every midsummer she was left princess regent of the poultry yard, etc., while her benefactors went to visit their relatives in Old Lyon Hall in the mountains.
Every autumn the family returned to Richmond to spend the winter.
And every Christmas came the grand family re-union, in which, to the child’s worshipping eyes, Mr. Alexander was the central figure. This Christmas gathering became to her the crowning glory of the year, for then she saw him. He became thus associated with all that was best and brightest in her life. He brought her the books and pictures for which already her intellect and imagination had begun to hunger. He always examined into the progress of her education; though that was scarcely necessary, for the constantly improving style of her letters to him revealed her steady advance. I believe that with her bright intelligence, she would have studied well from the pure love of knowledge, even if Mr. Alexander had never patronized her; but now all cooler motives were lost in the ardent desire to please her friend. And indeed she did please him; he was proud of her, vain of her, not as if he had been her father, but as if he had been her creator. He seemed to think, as she grew in beauty and bright intelligence, that he had made her what she was. To his apprehension, he was the sun and she the sun-flower, ever turning towards him for light and life.
Every one, who is not blindly selfish, likes to patronize where to do so costs little or nothing. Mr. Alexander’s patronage of this child amused and interested him; cost him nothing; but won for him a vast return of love and gratitude.