“He has now, I hope; but people don't always keep them. Suppose they should go by some accident when your father was too old to make any more stamps for himself?”
“You haven't thought of brother Daniel—”
True; for nobody ever had, in connection with the active employments of life.
“No, Billy,” I replied; “I forgot him; but then, you know, Daniel is more of a student than a business man, and—”
“Oh, Uncle Teddy! you don't think I meant he'd support them? I meant I'd have to take care of father and mother and of all when they'd all got to be old people together. Just think! I'm eleven and he's twenty-two; so he is just twice as old as I am. How old are you?”
“Forty, Billy, last August.”
“Well, you aren't so awful old, and when I get to be as old as you Daniel will be eighty. Seth Kendall's grandfather isn't more than that, and he has to be fed with a spoon, and a nurse puts him to bed and wheels him around in a chair like a baby. That takes the stamps, I bet! Well, I'll tell you how I'll keep my accounts; I'll have a stick like Robinson Crusoe, and every time I make a toadskin I'll gouge a piece out of one side of the stick, and every time I spend one I'll gouge a piece out of the other.”
“Spend a what!” said the gentle and astonished voice of my sister Lu, who, unperceived, had slipped into the room.
“A toadskin, ma,” replied Billy, shutting up Colburn with a farewell glance of contempt.
“Dear! dear! where does the boy learn such horrid words?”