But his perplexity about Mrs. Robertson's gush lingered in his mind, and a year or two later, on his twentieth birthday, as it happened, he asked Miss Lydia again what on earth it meant? . . . The Robertsons had braved the raw Old Chester winter and come down to the old house to be near their son on that day. They came like the Greeks, bearing gifts, which, it being Johnny's birthday, they knew could not be refused—and old Miss Lydia, unlike the priest of Apollo, had no spear to thrust at them except the forbidden spear of Truth! So her heart was in her mouth when Johnny, who had gone to supper with his father and mother, came home at nearly midnight and told her how good they were to him. But he was preoccupied as he talked, and once or twice he frowned. Then suddenly he burst out:
"Aunty, why does Mr. Robertson bother about me?"
"Does he?" Miss Lydia said.
"Well, yes; he says he wants me to go into his firm when I leave college. He says he'll give me mighty good pay. But—but he wants me to take his name."
"Oh!" said Miss Lydia. She looked so little and pretty, lying there in her bed, with her soft white hair—the frizette had vanished some years ago—parted over her delicate furrowed brow, and her blue eyes wide and frightened, like a child's, that Johnny suddenly hugged her.
"As for the name part of it," he said, "I said my name was Smith. Not handsome or distinguished, but my own. I said I had no desire to change it, but if I ever did it would be to Sampson."
A meager tear stood in the corner of Miss Lydia's eye. "That was very nice of you, Johnny," she said, quaveringly.
"I'd like the business part of it all right," said Johnny. . . . "Say, Aunt Lydia—what is all the milk in the coconut about me? Course I'm not grown up for nothing; I know I'm—queer. I got on to that when I was fifteen—I put the date on Eddy Mack's nose! But I'd like to know, really, who I am?"
"You're my boy," said Miss Lydia.
"You bet I am!" said Johnny; "but who were my father and mother?"