He mumbled fiercely when he
saw them, and Simmons cried out delightedly: "There now, he's better--
he's swearin' at me!" The first intelligible words he spoke were those
that had last passed his lips: "M-m-my f-f--," and from his melancholy
eyes a meagre tear slid into a wrinkle and was lost.
Dr. Lavendar, sitting beside him, put his old hand over the other old
hand, that lay with puffed fingers motionless on the coverlet. "Yes,
Benjamin, it was your fault, and mine, and Samuel's. We were all
responsible because we did not do our best for the boy. But remember,
his Heavenly Father will do His best."
"M-m-my f--" the stammering tongue began again, but the misery
lessened in the drawn face. Any denial of the fact he tried to state
would have maddened him. But Dr. Lavendar never denied facts; apart
from the question of right and wrong, he used to say it was not worth
while. He accepted old Mr. Wright's responsibility as, meekly, he had
accepted his own, but he saw in it an open door.
And that was why he went that evening to the Wright house. It was a
melancholy house. When their father was at home, the little girls
whispered to each other and slipped away to their rooms, and when they
were alone with their mother, they quivered at the sight of her tears
that seemed to flow and flow and flow. Her talk was all of Sam's
goodness and affection and cleverness. "He read such learned books!
Why, that very last afternoon, when we were all taking naps, he was
reading a big leather-covered book from your father's library, all
about the Nations.
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