“‘It isn’t very likely,’ said I; but all the time I felt that I would be as likely to go as not. I told him I would talk over business matters with Squire Peabody, and that I would sign any papers the squire told me to sign, when the right time came; but I let him understand that I meant to have the full value of my share. It would, I thought, be as safe for Myra’s boys in my hands as in his, though I didn’t just say that to him.
“Well, he went away, and I sat there thinking it all over, just on the spot where I sat to-day when you and the other girls were looking through Dr Justin’s spy-glass; and I told myself that I hadn’t much of anything to look forward to, and that, after all, I might as well do one thing as another. Life didn’t seem worth much to me, but I might make my life worth something to Myra’s boys. There is always duty left when hope is gone, and if I owed duty to any one, surely it was to my sister’s children—so I reasoned. I would wait and see.
“Well, the children came back, and had something more to eat, and sang some hymns, and then it was time to go. The boys kept close to me as we all went down to the place where the trains were waiting; and the poor little fellows cried, and did seem so forlorn when they went away, that I just couldn’t get them out of my thoughts for a long time.
“I didn’t think the sale of the farm would come off for awhile, but I was mistaken. Ezra came over to see the squire one day in October, and they talked it over, and matters were settled, and papers signed, and my share of the price of the land made over to me; and Ezra was to go away at the end of the month. The boys were to be left till spring, till he could make some kind of a home for them, and he said he depended more on me than on any one else to see that they were well done by till then: ‘For they are more and nearer to you than to any one else except myself,’ he said.
“‘It is not likely that I can do much for them while they are in your mother’s keeping,’ I said.
“‘Oh, mother thinks everything of you!’ he said, with a foolish laugh; ‘and you’ve got your share all right. Squire Peabody has seen to that.’
“That was the first winter that Mrs Peabody’s health began to fail. It wasn’t long before your father died, and the squire took her South for the winter, and the house was left to my care; and they said, if I liked, I might have one or two of Myra’s children to keep me company. So I went over and got Jim, the eldest, so as to give him a chance at our winter school, and the baby, as everybody called him, though he was nearly four years old.
“You’ve heard me tell about my Davie before. I needn’t say much about him. The very first feeling of rest and comfort that had come to me, after months of lonesome pain, came the first time he fell asleep in my arms, with his little chapped hand upon my cheek: it was like the coming back of the time when I had baby Eunice to care for; but it was different; too, in some ways. Jim was as good and as bright a boy as need be, and we had a happy winter together.
“Well, in the spring the squire and his wife came home, and she seemed better. They hadn’t been home long when a letter came from Ezra, saying he wanted the boys to be sent out to him. He couldn’t, without considerable loss of time, go for them, but there were chances every day of people coming West, who would look after them all they needed. A chance of any one willing to trouble himself with the care of four boys, one of them little more than a baby, wasn’t likely to come very soon, and the summer was over before we heard again; and all that time Jim and Davie had stayed on with me. Then there came another letter, saying that the boys were to be sent on alone. Nothing would be likely to happen to them, as they needn’t change cars more than once before they reached Chicago, and he would meet them there.
“Then I wrote, saying the rest of them might go so, and I would keep Davie for some better chance; or, if his father said so, I would keep him altogether, and do for him till he was old enough to do for himself. Well, quicker than ever an answer came before, a letter came, saying ‘No!’—Davie must come with the rest. He saw his way clear to do well by all his boys. Farming was a better thing out West than in New England. He wanted all his boys.