"'Liphalet, I 've got a dooty to perform towards this motherless child, an' I ain't a-goin' to let no foolish notions keep me from performin' it."
"Miss Hester, I 'm a-tryin' to follow Him that was a father to the fatherless an' a husband to the widow,—strange, that was made only to the widow,—an' I 've got somethin' of a idee o' dooty myself. You may think I 'm purty presumptuous, but I 've took a notion into my head to kind o' help along a-raisin' Freddie. I ain't a-goin' to question yore authority, or nothin', but I thought mebbe you 'd len' me the child once in a
while to kind o' lighten up that old lonesome place o' mine: I know that Freddie won't object."
"Oh, 'Liphalet, do go 'long: I scarcely know whether you air a man or a child, sometimes."
"There 's One that says, 'Except you become as a little child'—"
"'Liphalet, will you go 'long home?"
"I 'spect I 'd better be gittin' along.—Good-bye, Freddie; be a good boy, an' some day I 'll take you up to my house an' let you ride old Bess around.—Good-bye, Miss Hester." And as he passed out to his buggy he whistled tenderly something that was whistled when he was a boy.
CHAPTER VI
The life of one boy is much like that of another. They all have their joys and their griefs, their triumphs and their failures, their loves and their hates, their friends and their foes, much as men have them in that maturer life of which the days of youth are an epitome. It would be rather an uninteresting task, and an entirely thankless one, to follow in detail the career of Frederick Brent as he grew from childhood to youth. But in order to understand certain traits that developed in his character, it will be necessary to note some, at least, of the circumstances that influenced his early life.