“I will stay with you. And I shall enjoy the music-lessons. Are you really going to get us a piano? I would rather be here with you than anywhere else. And the housework will be fun when I can manage it to suit myself. Nell always wants to boss it, and I almost hate it sometimes; but I shall like to manage.”
Austin laughed at Lila’s earnestness before he said, “I fear there is a streak of bossiness in every one of us. I am well developed on that line, Amy and Nell are my close seconds, and here you are getting the same characteristic. Well, if you stay with me you can ‘boss’ to your heart’s content.”
“Austin,” and Lila spoke confidentially, “why does Doyle want to go down to the farm? I do not want a new mother. She could not be like our own mother. And I hardly know Papa.”
“Doyle does not remember his own mother at all, and he has longed all his life for a mother’s love. He wants a father and mother like other boys have, and I can not blame him. Then he loves the farm and would rather be there than anywhere else. All his talk is about a farm and farm-work. I think it will be better for him to go. Papa is not drinking now, and will do very well by him. We must not think that Papa has no love for his children, nor that he would not have any of us with him. He was lonely, and had much to discourage him in the past.”
“I had not thought of it in that way,” said Lila softly. “Perhaps Papa does love us a little after all.”
“Doyle,” said Austin one day when they had a chance for a quiet talk alone, “do you yet wish to go to your father and his new wife?”
“Yes, Austin, I do,” answered the boy earnestly.
“Why are you dissatisfied with your home here? Have I not made it comfortable and homelike for you?” questioned Austin, who could hardly help feeling that the boy’s sentiments reproached him.
“It is not that, Austin. I am happy enough here, and satisfied with all you have done for me. But I want a father and a mother. I see other fellows with their parents, and it makes me lonesome. I feel as if I were not getting my share. There can be no one to really take the place of a fellow’s father and mother, can there? I want to be with them and call them Father and Mother.”
“You are right, Doyle. There can no one take the place of a mother, and it ought to be that way with a father. I have tried to fill both places to you children, but after all I am only a big brother. I have a proposition for you. I will let you go to your father this summer as soon as school is out, and you may stay till fall, and then if you like it better than you do here you may remain with your father. You know what life is here, and when you have tried that out, decide what you will do. I shall hate to give you up, but if you want your father and he wants you, I have no right to keep you apart.”