“Not so many as they have in these days,” she flashed back at him. “But this book of yours is just the old questions in new dress.”
Then they bent to their work.
[CHAPTER VIII]
DERRICK FORMAN, THIRD
IT WAS after the lesson for the next day had been carefully gone over and argued out, and while Aunt Elsie was debating with herself as to the wisdom of referring to their former conversation, that Derrick asked a question which settled the point.
“Aunt Elsie, do you mean that Uncle Derrick never came home at all, after that time when he went away, a boy?”
“Yes, I mean that; he never saw the old home again. Before the cloud was lifted from his name he said he didn’t want to come. You see, he thought that nobody believed in him. Afterwards, when he might have come, father was gone, and he felt as though he couldn’t bear it, to come back and miss him. It was about that time that your uncle began to write to me, regularly. Oh, dear, how I did enjoy those letters! I want to show you some of them, some time; especially that one he wrote about the boy who ruined his life, or at least did what he could toward it; nobody can ruin a life that has been given to the Lord, as his was.”
“Was he—different from other boys about that, Aunt Elsie?” questioned the seventeen-year-old boy, with a shade of embarrassment. He did not know just how to frame a question on such a subject. “I mean, he always a—well, a church member?”
“Oh, no, he wasn’t; he was a good, noble-minded boy who tried about as hard as any of them to do right; but he said it was his trouble and the dreadful sense of loneliness which grew upon him, that led him at last to accept the friendship of Jesus. He told me all about it a little while afterward. I guess nobody ever before wrote to just a sister such long, beautiful letters as he did to me; but you see I was all he had; father and mother and all the rest of them narrowed down to just me. It seems too bad. If your father—well, if they two had only understood each other, it would have been a great blessing to both. I thought it would break my heart altogether when those letters stopped coming. It was different with me from what it is with most girls; he was the only one who ever loved me much, except, of course, mother and father; but I was lame from my very babyhood, you may say, and homely, and shy; I wasn’t a bit like your Aunt Caroline, ever; and he, being alone, and taking a homesick sort of liking to the first real letter I wrote him, just adopted me in place of all his other kin, except you.”
“Except me!” exclaimed the astonished boy.
“Yes, he took the most amazing interest in you from the very first time he heard of you. Every little thing I could gather about you from any source I had to repeat to him. It was your name that especially interested him at first, and also one or two little things that I wrote about you; when you were just a tiny baby you used to remind us of your grandfather; and as you grew older you had a quaint little way of tossing back your hair and lifting up your chin, that was so exactly like him it was funny to see. I described it all to your uncle, and it seemed as though he could never hear enough. Then, of course, he was naturally interested in Joseph’s boy; he loved your father, Derrick, with the kind of love that brothers do not often get, and he seemed to include you in the same feeling. He began, before you were two years old, to dream out your life for you, and pray it out. I can show you letters that will go straight to your heart. Since I have seen you here in your home and have grown to feel that I really know you, I have wondered if your Uncle Derrick didn’t understand you a little better than any one else does.”