Louis seated himself cross-legged on the floor at her feet, George imitating him to the letter, and looked up gravely into her face. “My papa says,” he continued, “that he hopes you are better, and if you could take a little walk it would do you good.”
“Nothin’ won’t ever do me no good no more, Louis, not in this world.”
“And Aunt Sally says,” continued the boy, so anxious for the accurate transmission of his message as to pass by this remark, “Aunt Sally says, if you feel strong enough, you could take a walk with me and George, and if you don’t, we can ’muse you a little bit.”
“Bless your sweet eyes,” said Susan, “I ain’t strong enough hardly to walk across this room, Louis, let alone goin’ out o’ doors.”
Louis pondered over this for a moment pitifully; it was quite incomprehensible to his childish vigor. Then, his mind reverting to his own concerns, he brought out, as most of us do, the subject which lay uppermost.
“I want to ask you, Aunt Susan, how do boys learn to read?”
Susan laughed. “Same way girls do, I s’pose,” she said. “I learned out of a spellin’-book. But you must learn your letters first.”
“What’s letters?” asked the child.
Susan lifted the large Bible that lay on the table beside her,—a treasure inherited from their mother, to which the sisters had clung all through their days of destitution. It opened of itself at the eleventh chapter of Isaiah.
“That’s a letter,” said Susan, pointing to the large capital that headed the chapter; “that’s A, and A stands for Anna.”