“Ef they’re so good, why don’t you eat yoreself? You been foolin’ with a half a one for the last ten minutes.” Indeed, the old man’s food did seem to stick in his throat, and once in a while a mist would come up before his eyes. He too had had his dreams, and one of them was of many a happy evening spent with his beloved boy, who should be near him, a joy and comfort in the evening of his life; and now he was going away.
The old man took a deep gulp at his coffee to hide his emotion. It burned his mouth and gave reason for the moisture in his eye when he looked up at Fred.
“What train air you goin’ to take, Fred?” he asked.
“I think I’ll catch that eight-fifty flier. It’s the best I can get, you know, and vestibuled through, too.”
“You have jest finally made up yore mind to go, have you?”
“Nothing could turn me from it now, Uncle ’Liph.”
“It seems like a shame. You ain’t got nothin’ to do down in Cincinnaty.”
“I’ll find something before long. I am going to spend the first few days just in getting used to being free.” The next moment he was sorry that he had said it, for he saw his guardian’s eyes fill.
“I am sorry, Frederick,” she said, with some return to her old asperity, “I am sorry that I’ve made your life so hard that you think that you have been a slave. I am sorry that my home has been so onpleasant that you’re so powerful glad to git away from it, even to go into a strange city full of wickedness an’ sin.”
“I didn’t mean it that way, Aunt Hester. You’ve been as good as you could be to me. You have done your duty by me, if anyone ever could.”
“Well, I am mighty glad you realise that, so’s ef you go away an’ fall into sinful ways you can’t lay none of it to my bringin’-up.”
“I feel somehow as if I would like to have a go with sin some time, to see what it is like.”
“Well, I lay you’ll be satisfied before you’ve been in Cincinnaty long, for ef there ever was livin’ hells on airth, it’s them big cities.”
“Oh, I have got faith to believe that Fred ain’t a-goin’ to do nothin’ wrong,” said Eliphalet.
“Nobody don’t know what nobody’s a-goin’ to do under temptation sich as is layin’ in wait fur young men in the city, but I’m shore I’ve done my best to train you right, even ef I have made some mistakes in my poor weak way an’ manner.”
“If I do fall into sinful ways, Aunt Hester, I shall never blame you or your training for it.”
“But you ain’t a-goin’ to do it, Fred; you ain’t a-goin’ to fall into no evil ways.”
“I don’t know, Uncle ’Liph. I never felt my weakness more than I do now.”
“Then that very feelin’ will be yore stren’th, my boy. Keep on feelin’ that way.”
“It’ll not be a stren’th in Cincinnaty, not by no means. There is too many snares an’ pitfalls there to entrap the weak,” Mrs. Hodges insisted.
It is one of the defects of the provincial mind that it can never see any good in a great city. It concludes that, as many people are wicked, where large numbers of human beings are gathered together there must be a much greater amount of evil than in a smaller place. It overlooks the equally obvious reasoning that, as some people are good, in the larger mass there must be also a larger amount of goodness. It seems a source of complacent satisfaction to many to sit in contemplation of the fact of the extreme wickedness of the world. They are like children who delight in a “bluggy” story—who gloat over murder and rapine.
Brent, however, was in no wise daunted by the picture of evil which his guardian painted for him, and as soon as breakfast was over he got his things in hand ready to start. Buoyant as he was with his new freedom, this was a hard moment for him. Despite the severity of his youthful treatment in Dexter, the place held all the tender recollections he had, and the room where he stood was the scene of some memories that now flooded his mind and choked his utterance when he strove to say goodbye. He had thought that he should do it with such a fine grace. He would prove such a strong man. But he found his eyes suffused with tears, as he held his old guardian’s hand, for, in spite of all, she had done the best for him that she knew, and she had taken a hard, uncompromising pride in him.
“I hope you’ll git along all right, Frederick,” she faltered forth tearfully. “Keep out of bad company, an’ let us hear from you whenever you can. The Lord knows I’ve tried to do my dooty by you.”
Poor Eliphalet tried to say something as he shook the young man’s hand, but he broke down and wept like a child. The boy could not realise what a deal of sunshine he was taking out of the old man’s life.
“I’ll write to you as soon as I am settled,” he told them, and with a husky farewell hurried away from the painful scene. At the gate the old couple stood and watched him go swinging down the street towards the station. Then they went into the house, and sat long in silence in the room he had so lately left. The breakfast-table, with all that was on it, was
