“Why should he hate you?” wondered Jane. “I could understand if you were really—”
“What?”
“If you were like what you seemed to be like the first night you were here,” she said frankly. “I didn’t like you then either. I didn’t like you for quite a long time. I didn’t like you until you said that you were going away.”
“Maybe Carl would like me better if I told him that,” said Paul, laughing, but with a rather sad expression in his eyes. “And I’ve been thinking lately—”
“What?” asked Jane, quickly, looking up into his face.
“I’ve been thinking that I—perhaps I ought to, Janey.”
“No, no, no, no! Not yet, Paul! You said, just the other day—and what a silly little thing to make so much of. Lots of brothers squabble and call each other names—”
“But it doesn’t make a particularly happy household, does it? I don’t want to go, Janey—not yet. J don’t want to go until—it’s a hard thing to explain exactly, but this is the way it is. When I first came, I was thinking only of one thing—father was gone, and I didn’t care for anyone in the world, and I didn’t want to. I wanted to work by myself and for myself, in the way that seemed most to my liking—and when I found that Uncle had other plans for me, and intended to force me into them, it made me furious—and what was worse was the thought that I had to do either as Uncle wanted or—well, starve, if I was out of luck. And I was afraid of starving, being an ordinary human being. I started to run away the first night I was here—Carl knows that—and I didn’t because I was afraid to. He knows that, too. And so I stayed on, planning to make a break as soon as I could. And I hated everything—I was perfectly miserable—until that night, do you remember, when we had that talk by the fire. After that, I began to look at things differently. It seemed to me that I’d been acting like a donkey, and so I decided to do as you said—make the best of things as I found them, and see what would happen. And now—I don’t know how it is—but you’ve all been so good to me, and it makes a difference not to be all alone. Now, when I think of the fine things I may do some day, I think of how you all may be proud of me, and how—perhaps—maybe Frederickstown would be proud of—all that seems silly, doesn’t it—but anyway that’s the reason why I’d hate to go away now—why I’d hate to go away with any hard feeling behind me. That is, unless it simply had to be. Men have lived alone, and worked and done great things with no one to care whether they lived or died—and I could do it, too. But, over and above cake-baking—” he laughed, as if a little ashamed of his own seriousness, “I’ve learned that—I’ve learned that it is a better thing not to be all alone.”
Jane made no reply, and presently Paul went on,
“I daresay I made myself pretty disagreeable at first, and I don’t wonder that Carl hated me then—but I have tried to be decent to him, and to make him like me. If he doesn’t, it certainly isn’t his fault—it can’t be helped. Only, I haven’t any right—I mean, if he’s going to be miserable while I’m around, if I get on his nerves every minute—it isn’t as if we were little kids, we’ll soon be men, and two men quarrelling with each other in one family can make an awful mess of things. You were all happy together before I came.” As he said this he looked down gravely into the round, sober little face beside him. “Don’t you see, Janey?”