it was after the lesson for the next day had been carefully gone over and argued out, and while aunt elsie was debating with herself as to the wisdom of referring to their former conversation, that derrick asked a question which settled the point.
"aunt elsie, do you mean that uncle derrick never came home at all, after that time when he went away, a boy?"
"yes, i mean that; he never saw the old home again. before the cloud was lifted from his name he said he didn't want to come. you see, he thought that nobody believed in him. afterwards, when he might have come, father was gone, and he felt as though he couldn't bear it, to come back and miss him. it was about that time that your uncle began to write to me, regularly. oh, dear, how i did enjoy those letters! i want to show you some of them, some time; especially that one he wrote about the boy who ruined his life, or at least did what he could toward it; nobody can ruin a life that has been given to the lord, as his was."
"was he—different from other boys about that, aunt elsie?" questioned the seventeen-year-old boy, with a shade of embarrassment. he did not know just how to frame a question on such a subject. "i mean, he always a—well, a church member?"
"oh, no, he wasn't; he was a good, noble-minded boy who tried about as hard as any of them to do right; but he said it was his trouble and the dreadful sense of loneliness which grew upon him, that led him at last to accept the friendship of jesus. he told me all about it a little while afterward. i guess nobody ever before wrote to just a sister such long, beautiful letters as he did to me; but you see i was all he had; father and mother and all the rest of them narrowed down to just me. it seems too bad. if your father—well, if they two had only understood each other, it would have been a great blessing to both. i thought it would break my heart altogether when those letters stopped coming. it was different with me from what it is with most girls; he was the only one who ever loved me much, except, of course, mother and father; but i was lame from my very babyhood, you may say, and homely, and shy; i wasn't a bit like your aunt caroline, ever; and he, being alone, and taking a homesick sort of liking to the first real letter i wrote him, just adopted me in place of all his other kin, except you."
"except me!" exclaimed the astonished boy.
"yes, he took the most amazing interest in you from the very first time he heard of you. every little thing i could gather about you from any source i had to repeat to him. it was your name that especially interested him at first, and also one or two little things that i wrote about you; when you were just a tiny baby you used to remind us of your grandfather; and as you grew older you had a quaint little way of tossing back your hair and lifting up your chin, that was so exactly like him it was funny to see. i described it all to your uncle, and it seemed as though he could never hear enough. then, of course, he was naturally interested in joseph's boy; he loved your father, derrick, with the kind of love that brothers do not often get, and he seemed to include you in the same feeling. he began, before you were two years old, to dream out your life for you, and pray it out. i can show you letters that will go straight to your heart. since i have seen you here in your home and have grown to feel that i really know you, i have wondered if your uncle derrick didn't understand you a little better than any one else does."
her eyes had softened and taken on a dreamy, tender look. young derrick, studying her face, respected the silence into which she had dropped. when she spoke again her voice was lower and showed a stronger effort at self-control.
"he sent me gifts, some of them very nice, and after he was gone, there was a box sent to me of treasures that he had gathered through the years; but i would have given them all up in a minute for the sake of a little while with him. i was to go out to him, derrick, to live. the plans were all made, even to the day that i was to start. i was to join friends of his at chicago, and he had the route all mapped out; the places where i would stop on the way, and every detail arranged for my comfort. i have never told anybody about this before. he wanted it so. that is, he advised me not to explain anything to the others until a day or two before i was to start. they were all gone from the old place at that time, every one but me; i was living there alone with my good companion and friend, hannah potter. i think derrick had a feeling that some of the family would try to persuade me out of going, if they knew it long before, but they couldn't have done it; i was in eager haste to go; i thought about it day and night. he was quite a few years older than i, but he never seemed so to me; being separated from him when he was just a boy, he seemed to me always to stay so, while i knew that i had grown old fast. i think i had some such feeling as a mother might have; i looked forward to helping him; doing for him in all kinds of little ways; i knew i could make a home for him, and that was what he had missed. then came the awful accident; and, after that, the end. our father in heaven had 'made home' for him, but i was left outside. i felt that i had lost the only one in the world who would ever love me."
with that last word her voice broke, and again there was silence in the room. derrick swallowed hard and tried to speak, but at first no words would come. he had never been so moved in his life; the pathetic story of his uncle's wronged, desolate, loveless life, and the sudden realization of his own part in the injustice done even to his memory had made a profound impression. the boy had gone about with it on his mind for two days; now here was this added touch in the heart-break of a lame old woman with whitening hair, who said that she had lost the only one in the world who would ever love her. not much she hadn't! she should never have a chance to say that again, anyhow. suddenly he burst forth with words:
"i say, aunt elsie, can't you take me for your boy? i'll do my level best to make up to you for—for everything; and i'll try with all my might to be the kind of man uncle derrick was, honor bright, i will."
said aunt elsie to herself as she limped to her room that night, "the dear boy! i'll give him the book to-morrow."
it was left for jean to do a little scoffing in a good-natured way. "the entire family gone wild over aunt elsie," she said, talking to ray, but for the special benefit of florence and derrick; the latter stood with his hands in his pockets, whistling softly at intervals while he waited for ray to sew on a button. "you and mother adopted her, from principle, of course, before she got here; no one expected anything else of you two; then florence tumbled headlong after her as soon as it was found that she could hem invisibly, and darn, and pucker, and do no end of wonderful things with her needle, not to speak of her bits of choice old lace to be borrowed on occasion. and here's derrick her devoted slave on account of latin! also because she studied 'moral science,' whatever that was, in her girlhood; but what am i to do? i've no dresses to make over, or good enough to be adorned, and i don't have latin this year."
they laughed, of course; there seemed to be no other reply for such folly; though florence, with a touch of indignation, protested against being accused of self-interest; for her part, she did not see how anybody could help loving aunt elsie; such a cheery, capable, self-forgetful—
jean interrupted: "hear her use up the adjectives; there will be none left for my prize essay. but there is only one thing left for me to do in this family: i must plan something extraordinary; an elopement would be nice if i only knew how to bring my part about; i could be rescued at the last moment from the jaws of the tempter—is that a good simile, ray?—by the ubiquitous aunt elsie; and years afterward, when i learned that the man was a forger, and burglar, and several other villainous things, i should fall on my knees before her in gratitude, and adore her forever after; that is the way they do in books. dick, if aunt elsie approves, you might call for me at sherwin's about four, and we can make that promised call on the arden girls, about the programme you know; be sure you ask aunt elsie first, though."
with this parting thrust jean vanished, laughing as she went, and was presently seen hurrying down the street.
derrick echoed her laugh, although there was a heightened color on his face; but florence spoke her annoyance:
"i can't think what has happened to jean; when aunt elsie first came she got on with her much better than i did, and now she is really almost rude to her sometimes. aunt elsie takes it so patiently, too, and is always bright and pleasant with her. i don't know how to account for the way the child acts."
derrick had already departed; there was no one to reply but ray, who said, by way of excuse, that jean had to have her fun, and that it must be remembered that she did not mean more than half she said, when she was in one of her semi-sarcastic moods. but ray, too, was puzzled; she had been the first to notice the change in jean; certainly her present line of action was very unlike her.
aunt elsie had now been a member of the family long enough for all to get their bearings, and, with the exception of jean, they had not only ceased to sigh over the family upheaval, but openly rejoiced in the new member's presence. "what would we do without aunt elsie!" was a sentiment that in varying forms of expression was now constantly heard in the household, but never from jean.
that young woman, as she waited at the corner for her car, on the afternoon in question, shook herself irritably, as if to shake off some annoyance. it was her way of expressing dissatisfaction with herself. as often as she was betrayed into expressions of annoyance, thinly veiled in playfulness over the present state of things in her home, she was ashamed of it.
"i need not have said that to dick," she told herself. "i need not have said any of it, for that matter," and it humiliated her to think that she had again broken the resolution to "hold her tongue."
it is doubtful if she understood herself any better than her family did. had she realized that her uncomfortable frame of mind sprang from an ugly root named "jealousy," she would have been appalled; had any one told her this she would probably have indignantly denied it; yet in plain prose, she was jealous of her aunt's influence over dick, who had always seemed to belong almost exclusively to her. the two were so nearly of an age that they had taken their daily outings in the same baby carriage at the same time; and had been all but inseparable ever since. the fact that jean was a few months older had seemed to give her a kind of dominance over her brother; at least he had followed her lead or fallen into line with her good-naturedly when their views crossed, nearly all his life. this, until very lately; she could not understand the change in him; within a few weeks on two or three notable occasions he had not only differed from her entirely, but persisted in carrying out his own ways, even when they ran directly athwart hers. this he did with such cheerful assurance as to exasperate his sister still further. not knowing how else to account for it, she decided to attribute it all to the influence of the aunt of whom he had suddenly become so fond; and she resented it.
"it is so ridiculous!" she said, with an angry toss of her head, as the tardy car still kept her waiting. "he seems to be actually infatuated with that lame old woman whom he called, when she first came, 'the homeliest critter he ever looked at!' ray and florence think he is 'so changed'; i should think he was! of course, i am glad for some things; it is nice that he doesn't want to stay out nights any more, nor go to places that father does not like; but—couldn't he have done that for all our sakes, i should like to know! just as though she was the only person in the world who cared for him! i believe i shall end by—" but here she suddenly checked herself; she had almost said she would end by hating that old woman! she did not mean that, of course; she was not even going to let herself think it for a moment; aunt elsie was all right enough for those who liked her; and there seemed to be plenty of them! well, she had no objections; why should she have? but as for bowing down herself, to worship at the same shrine, she was never going to do it, and they need not expect it; not if aunt elsie should say, every hour in the day, that "jean had a voice she loved to listen to." what did she know about voices? the only thing she wanted of her was to let dick alone.
as a matter of fact, it was altogether another influence that was dominating her brother's life and working its inevitable change in his character. long before this time he had received his book, and read and re-read it. the smile with which he had first received it at his aunt's hand, after having heard its story, had in it a touch of superiority.
it was pathetic to see how much she thought of that diary of uncle derrick's; he would take the greatest possible care never to let her see that it couldn't by any possibility mean so much to him. it was fine, of course, to have a whole book written solely for one's self, and if his uncle had known how to write half so well as aunt elsie thought he did, there would be interesting things in it about the new country and the pioneer times in which he lived; but as for its being so very wonderful, why, of course—here he shrugged his shoulders and laughed a little. all the same, trust him for helping aunt elsie to think that he considered it the most wonderful book that was ever written.
this, before he had read a line of it. before he had read half a dozen pages he had begun to realize that at least it was different from any book of which he had ever heard.
