“To work,” he answered, smiling. “If I am to go on, as you say, I must go where I can find something to do.”
“If that isn't just like you—you child!” cried the old teacher. “You are all alike,—you boys and girls. You all must have something to do; always, it is 'something to do'.”
“Well,” he returned, “and must we not have something to do?”
“You will do something, certainly,” she answered; “but, before you can DO anything that is worth doing, you must BE something. Life isn't DOING;—it is BEING.”
“I wonder if that was not the real reason for my wretched failures,” said Brian, thoughtfully.
“It is the real reason for most of our failures,” she returned. “And so you are not going to fail again. You are not going away somewhere, you don't know where, to do something you don't know what. You are going to stay right here, and just BE something. Then, when the time comes, you will do whatever is yours to do as naturally and as inevitably as the birds sing, as the blossoms come in the spring, or as the river finds its way to the sea.”
And more than ever Brian Kent felt in the presence of Auntie Sue as a little boy to whom the world had grown suddenly very big and very wonderful.
But, after a while, he shook his head, smiling wistfully. “No, no, Auntie Sue, that sounds all true and right enough, but it can't be. I must go just the same.”
“Why can't it be, Brian?”
“For one thing,” he returned, “I cannot risk the danger to you. After all, as long as I am living, there is a chance that my identity will be discovered, and you—no, no; I must not!”