“I can hardly believe it, Nat, my boy,” he said in a husky voice. “It don’t seem natural for you to be going away, my boy, and I don’t know how I shall get on without you.”
As he spoke he held my hands in his, and though he was pretending to be very cheerful, I could see that he was greatly troubled, and after all his kindness to me I felt as if I was behaving cruelly and ungratefully in the extreme.
“But I’m not going to grieve about you, Nat, my boy,” he said quite cheerfully, “and here’s your knife.”
As he spoke he drew a splendid great jack-knife out of his pocket, hauling out a quantity of white cord to which it was attached, and proceeding to fasten it round my waist.
“There, Nat, my boy,” he said, “it was the best I could get you; and the man says it is a splendid bit of stuff. Do you like it, Nat—do you like it?”
“Oh, uncle,” I said, “it is too kind of you!”
“Not a bit, my boy, not a bit; and now make good use of it, and grow strong and big, and come back as clever a man as your uncle, and I know you will.”
There is a bit of history to that knife, for it was only the day before that he and I and Uncle Dick were together, and Uncle Joe wanted to make me a present.
“There, Nat,” said Uncle Joe, drawing his heavy gold watch out of the fob by its watered-silk ribbon with the handsomely chased gold key and large topaz seal at the end, “I shall give you that watch, my boy, for a keepsake. Take it, Nat, and put it in your pocket; keep it out of sight, my boy, till you have gone. I shall tell your aunt afterwards, but she mightn’t like it, you know, and it would be a little unpleasant.”
“But I don’t like to take your watch, uncle,” I said, glad as I should have been to have it, for it seemed too bad to take it away.