Titus turned round. His grandfather’s face was glowing.
“How can you ever think for an instant,” said the Judge, “that any boy or any girl can take the place of my only dear child?”
Titus’s sullen face melted.
“I want to make a noble man of you, my boy,” continued the older man, advancing with both hands outstretched. “I want you to have a great, generous heart, to get out into the huge world and make thousands of souls happy. You cannot expect all those souls to be responsive. You have got to make them happy, in spite of themselves; and how can you hope to influence thousands when you shrink from only one, and only a slightly uncongenial soul, at your own fireside? O, my dear grandson, love everybody, love everybody!”
It would have taken a sterner soul than Titus’s to resist such words, such ambitious and loving affection.
“Grandfather,” he said, slowly, “I’m sorry.”
The Judge caught his outstretched hand. “My dear boy,” he said, “my dear boy,” and he pressed the black head to his heart. “My own dear boy.”
Titus uttered a grunt of delight, and ran away. That own was for him. Fifty thousand English boys could not come between him and his grandfather.
“Hello, chickie,” he said, catching up Bethany and her big school bag as they appeared in the doorway. “Hello, chickie,” and he carried her and the bag up the first of the long staircases.
Laughing and catching her breath with delight, Bethany, after she was set down on her feet, threw a kiss after Titus and then mounted the next staircase to her room.