Most of all, did the river speak to him; not, indeed, as it had spoken that dreadful night, when, from the window of his darkened room, he had listened to its call: the river spoke, now, in the full day as his eye followed its winding length through the hills in all its varied beauty of sunshine and shadow;—of gleaming silver and living green and russet-brown. It talked to him in the evening when the waters gave back the glories of the sky and the deepening twilight wrapped the world in its dusky veil of mystery. It spoke to him in the soft darkness of the night, as it swept on its way under the stars, or in the light of the golden moon. And, in time, some of these things which the river said to him, he, in turn, told to Auntie Sue.
And Auntie Sue, delighted with the man's awakening self, and charmed with his power of thought and his gift of expression, led him on. With artful suggestion and skilful question and subtle argument, she stimulated his mind and fancy to lay hold of the truths and beauties that life and nature offered. But ever the rare old gentlewoman was his teacher, revealing himself to himself; guiding him to a fuller discovery and knowledge of his own life and its meaning, which, indeed, is the true aim and end of all right teaching.
So the days of the autumn passed. The hills changed their robes of varied green for costumes of brown and gold, with touches here and there of flaming scarlet and brilliant yellow. And then winter was at hand, and that momentous evening came when Auntie Sue said to her pupil, after an hour of most interesting talk, “Brian, why in the world don't you write a book?”
“'A book'!” exclaimed Brian, in a startled tone.
Judy laughed. “He sure ought ter. Lord knows he talks like one.”
“I am in earnest, Brian,” said Auntie Sue, her lovely old eyes shining with enthusiasm and her gentle voice trembling with excitement. “I have been thinking about it for a long time, now, and, to-night, I just can't keep it to myself any longer. Why don't you give to the world some of the thoughts you have been wasting on Judy and me?”
“Hit's sure been a-wastin' of 'em on me,” agreed Judy. “'Fore God, I don't sense what he's a-talkin' 'bout, more'n half the time.”
Brian laughed. “Judy is prophetic, Auntie Sue. She voices perfectly the sentiment of the world toward any book I might write.”
Auntie Sue detected a note of bitterness underlying the laughing comment, and wondered.
Judy spoke again as she arose to retire to her room for the night: “I reckon as how there's a right smart of things youuns talk that'd be mighty fine if a body only had the learnin' ter sense 'em. An' there must be heaps of folks where youuns come from what would know Mr. Burns's meaning if he was to write hit all out plain. Everybody ain't like me. Hit's sure a God's-blessin' they ain't, too.”