“And you don't remember?” asked Virginia with tender pity; pity for him, and pity for the dead woman.
“Oh, yes, I do, in a way. I remember her saying good-bye and going off in the carriage. I watched her drive away from the hall window up-stairs, and you came to me there, and found me crying, you were crying, too; I remember a lot about her before that, long before that; and I remember him—the doctor, I mean. Why, I must have been a good-sized boy when they left!”
“Yes,” said Virginia sadly.
“I thought it was longer ago than that,” he muttered.
There was no use in his trying to show a grief he did not feel; his aunt would have detected the false ring if he had attempted it; yet he wondered, disquietingly, that he was so little stirred.
He never asked to see Dr. Stillman's letter, and only read it when he found that Virginia was really anxious he should; and then having read it, he returned it to her without comment beyond the words, “I don't like him!” meaning the doctor; but then, as a child, he had not liked him.
CHAPTER THIRTY
TOM BENSON, a younger brother of old Jacob Benson had emigrated to Ohio some time in the early twenties. He was a superior sort of a mechanic, and when Newton Bendy established his iron works, Tom sought and found employment with him.