He started up again and scowled at me angrily.
“What cost could it be to me? I am not much of a fellow to go to races, am I?—a fellow who has no more strength than a girl because every once in a while he is choked to death for days and days and nights and nights, and is a disgrace and a disappointment to his father!”
“Oh, not a disgrace, Rob, not a disgrace!” I interrupted. “I think it would kill Uncle Horace if you were that. I hope you don’t think that illness like yours could ever be a disgrace!”
“Kill him? kill father? I guess it would make him kill me, more likely!” he said, with a queer, grim, little chuckle. “He thinks it’s a disgrace to be weak and girly. It makes a fellow like that, Bathsheba, to be the way I’ve been!” He spoke with sudden earnestness, his voice growing husky. “No one understands all about it but Dave; it’s queer when he’s so strong and plucky himself. Usually a plucky fellow thinks you ought to be so, too. He thinks it’s just as easy! But Dave can put himself in another fellow’s place; and we’ve been together such a lot. He liked to go with me just as well as with the boys that were stronger and different. He said so, anyway.” The boy suddenly raised himself again and looked up wistfully into my face. “You don’t think he was making believe because he pitied me, do you, Bathsheba? I’ve been thinking of a good many things since I’ve been sick this time.”
He looked so pitiful, his angular figure quite devoid of boyish grace, with narrow, stooping shoulders and sunken chest and his eyes so big and dark with the great hollows around them, that tears suddenly filled my eyes.
“I don’t think Dave ever made believe in his life,” I said heartily. “At least he isn’t deceitful.”
“But you pity me,” he said, looking suspiciously at my tears. “I’ve been thinking it would be better if I should die. That’s the way it would turn out in a story-book, and then everything would be all right.”
“The way what would turn out? What would be all right?” I demanded sharply.
“Why—why—Dave wouldn’t have to bother with me, and father would never be ashamed of me any more.”
Of course I scolded him, calling him weak and foolish, and trying to rouse him to the courage and the trust in God’s Providence that alone could help him. I pitied him so that I almost forgot Dave and that my errand had been to try to find evidence that he was innocent—or at least less guilty than he seemed. I could not feel that I had found anything at all satisfactory in that line. It did seem likely that Rob knew more about the matter than he meant to tell, but it was scarcely possible that it was anything that could clear Dave. When a fellow’s inheritance was such a puny body as his, and an incurable disease, it was better that he should die, persisted Rob. And I knew it was no time for preaching, but I remembered the strong helpful text that was engraved upon the tiles of the Deemster’s mantel: