"Yes, damn it!" He rarely swore at all. "Where did you suppose I would be? But I lived in terror for a month—oh, in deadly fear!"
"Thank you, sir."
"Thank me, what for? Some forms of sudden danger make me gay, with all my faculties at their best, but not that. I had to nurse Rivers; that was the worst of it. You see, my son, I was a coward."
"I should like to be your kind of a coward, Uncle Jim."
"Well, it was awful. Let us talk of something else. I left your aunt better, went to Washington, saw our Congressman, got your nomination to West Point and a letter from Leila. Your aunt must be fast mending, for she was making a long list of furniture for the new parsonage, and 'would I see Ellen Lamb and'—eleven other things, the Lord knows what else, and 'when could she return?' McGregor said in September, and I so wrote to her; she will hate it. And she dislikes your going to West Point. I had to tell her, of course."
"I have had a letter from Leila, uncle. Did she write you anything about
Josiah?"
"About Josiah! No. What was that?"
"She said I was not to tell, but I think you ought to know—"
"Of course, I should know. Go on. Let me see the letter."
"It is upstairs, sir, but this is what she wrote," and he went on to tell the story.