And Dr. Wise, recognizing the state of tension the lad was in, forbade a single question being put to him.
But after dinner—there was Queen’s pudding, and the pyramid of icing did not go to Freddie—he pulled himself together and told his story.
After he had written that last of his letters to his family and told of his aunt’s sudden death, a strange thing had happened. He found at the bottom of the bird-seed tin, which she had delivered into his hands with so many injunctions, a sealed note.
“Here it is,” he said, and with a blurring of eyes took out gently from his waistcoat pocket the short letter written in the stiff, would-be German hand that had become part of herself.
The family read it silently, one after the other.
“Little Boy,” it said—
“When I feel ill as I do to-night my eyes grow clear-sighted. This is no place for you, here with a soured old man and a sourer old maid; you would have grown to far healthier manhood across the sea in that merry family that I have never let you talk about just as much as you wanted. But is it [311] ]too late? I think you know the way back. I was not blind to the looks you cast at Hamburg and Bremen on the boats that happened to have Sydney for their destination. Suppose you break away from us and make your way back to them all, little Alf? There are times in the lives of many of us when breaking away from a life that stifles the good in us is a necessary as well as a brave thing to do. I was too weak always and have stayed here warping all my life.
“I am putting four ten-pound notes with this; they will carry you across the water again if you have the courage to fling the big fortune you would have had to the winds. You have no ties here; grandfather is too old and lives too much to himself to care for you; I would far rather spare you than keep you and watch you grow hard and money-fond like us.
“Think of it, little Alf; your mother, my own sister that I played dolls with, makes no softening feeling in me at all now when I think of her. I made myself feel hard to her, years ago, and now when I should like to change and would give the world to feel a natural gush of love for her, I can wake no emotion at all; that is my punishment, for the heart will not be trifled with.
“But you, warm from the hearts of all those sisters and brothers—oh, go back to them and be poor and happy, and grow up in the healthy atmosphere of [312] ]‘give and take’ instead of our most wretched one of ‘keep.’