Her eyes had softened and taken on a dreamy, tender look. Young Derrick, studying her face, respected the silence into which she had dropped. When she spoke again her voice was lower and showed a stronger effort at self-control.
“He sent me gifts, some of them very nice, and after he was gone, there was a box sent to me of treasures that he had gathered through the years; but I would have given them all up in a minute for the sake of a little while with him. I was to go out to him, Derrick, to live. The plans were all made, even to the day that I was to start. I was to join friends of his at Chicago, and he had the route all mapped out; the places where I would stop on the way, and every detail arranged for my comfort. I have never told anybody about this before. He wanted it so. That is, he advised me not to explain anything to the others until a day or two before I was to start. They were all gone from the old place at that time, every one but me; I was living there alone with my good companion and friend, Hannah Potter. I think Derrick had a feeling that some of the family would try to persuade me out of going, if they knew it long before, but they couldn’t have done it; I was in eager haste to go; I thought about it day and night. He was quite a few years older than I, but he never seemed so to me; being separated from him when he was just a boy, he seemed to me always to stay so, while I knew that I had grown old fast. I think I had some such feeling as a mother might have; I looked forward to helping him; doing for him in all kinds of little ways; I knew I could make a home for him, and that was what he had missed. Then came the awful accident; and, after that, the end. Our Father in heaven had ‘made home’ for him, but I was left outside. I felt that I had lost the only one in the world who would ever love me.”
With that last word her voice broke, and again there was silence in the room. Derrick swallowed hard and tried to speak, but at first no words would come. He had never been so moved in his life; the pathetic story of his uncle’s wronged, desolate, loveless life, and the sudden realization of his own part in the injustice done even to his memory had made a profound impression. The boy had gone about with it on his mind for two days; now here was this added touch in the heart-break of a lame old woman with whitening hair, who said that she had lost the only one in the world who would ever love her. Not much she hadn’t! She should never have a chance to say that again, anyhow. Suddenly he burst forth with words:
“I say, Aunt Elsie, can’t you take me for your boy? I’ll do my level best to make up to you for—for everything; and I’ll try with all my might to be the kind of man Uncle Derrick was, honor bright, I will.”
Said Aunt Elsie to herself as she limped to her room that night, “The dear boy! I’ll give him the book to-morrow.”
It was left for Jean to do a little scoffing in a good-natured way. “The entire family gone wild over Aunt Elsie,” she said, talking to Ray, but for the special benefit of Florence and Derrick; the latter stood with his hands in his pockets, whistling softly at intervals while he waited for Ray to sew on a button. “You and mother adopted her, from principle, of course, before she got here; no one expected anything else of you two; then Florence tumbled headlong after her as soon as it was found that she could hem invisibly, and darn, and pucker, and do no end of wonderful things with her needle, not to speak of her bits of choice old lace to be borrowed on occasion. And here’s Derrick her devoted slave on account of Latin! Also because she studied ‘Moral Science,’ whatever that was, in her girlhood; but what am I to do? I’ve no dresses to make over, or good enough to be adorned, and I don’t have Latin this year.”
They laughed, of course; there seemed to be no other reply for such folly; though Florence, with a touch of indignation, protested against being accused of self-interest; for her part, she did not see how anybody could help loving Aunt Elsie; such a cheery, capable, self-forgetful—
Jean interrupted: “Hear her use up the adjectives; there will be none left for my prize essay. But there is only one thing left for me to do in this family: I must plan something extraordinary; an elopement would be nice if I only knew how to bring my part about; I could be rescued at the last moment from the jaws of the tempter—is that a good simile, Ray?—by the ubiquitous Aunt Elsie; and years afterward, when I learned that the man was a forger, and burglar, and several other villainous things, I should fall on my knees before her in gratitude, and adore her forever after; that is the way they do in books. Dick, if Aunt Elsie approves, you might call for me at Sherwin’s about four, and we can make that promised call on the Arden girls, about the programme you know; be sure you ask Aunt Elsie first, though.”
With this parting thrust Jean vanished, laughing as she went, and was presently seen hurrying down the street.
