She need not have worried about that. Derrick Forman, Third, who never did anything moderately, knew when he went to his room that evening after their long talk that he had adopted his Aunt Elsie. He assured himself that she was no more like Aunt Caroline than a diamond was like a lump of mud, and he was going to make up to her in every way that he possibly could for the loss of Uncle Derrick.
It was only two days afterward, while Aunt Elsie in the little family room was trying to decide whether or not to retire to her room, ostensibly to write a letter, but in reality to give her brother and sister a chance to talk over their daily problems without the embarrassment of having a listener, that Derrick appeared, book in hand.
“Hello!” he said, “I’m in luck; you are here and you’re not doing a thing! Do you suppose you could give a fellow a lift out of another hole?”
Both the father and mother began a protest: Aunt Elsie ought not to be troubled with his problems; he should wait until Ray was at liberty. But his aunt interrupted them eagerly. She would like nothing better than to try.
“If it should happen to be one of the holes into which I tumbled myself,” she said, gayly, “there is no telling what I might do. But you young people of to-day have so many new-fangled ones that I’m not sure—”
By this time she was glancing down at the page of the book he carried, and broke off to exclaim:
“Why, dear me! here is one of our old Moral Science questions. We argued about it all one recitation hour.”
“Moral what!” from the astonished student.
“Science. Somebody’s Moral Science, I forget his name; but that was the name of our text book.”
“Great Caesar! Did they have an ‘Immoral Science’ that they studied?”