“You grow more like your dad every day.”
Evening after evening these words rang through our house. They made all of us children shiver a little. Father sang them, danced a few halting steps, and then sang them again.
In the kitchen, as I have already said, we others sat with our eyes on the floor. One could not hear the words of the verses themselves, but the spirit of the song was known to all of us. Am I right? Were there—sometimes—tears in mother’s eyes as she bent over the ironing board?
Of that, after all, I cannot be too sure. I can only be everlastingly sure of the refrain:
“You grow more like your dad every day.”
* * * * *
And, however that may be, there is always one consoling thought. As a showman, and on stormy nights, there must sometimes have been but slight audiences at the schoolhouses and the takings for Aldrich and father must have been thin. One fancies evenings when eighty cents might cover all the receipts at the door.
One thinks of the eighty cents and shudders, and then a consoling thought comes. Of one thing we may be quite sure—father and Aldrich would not have gone hungry, and at night there must always have been comfortable beds into which they could crawl. Father had promised Aldrich he would see to the matter of bed and board.
And no doubt he did.
Even though the farmer and the farmer’s wife should have proved hard-hearted one remembers the number of Tillies in the farmhouses of Ohio. When everything else failed the Tillies would have taken care of the troubadours. Of that one may be, I should say, very very sure.