but that I meant to do my
best and to take my father's place with him, if he ever needed a son.
(More of my good mother's ideas, rather than my own, I am afraid.)
Unwittingly I had touched a pleasant chord, albeit a sad one.
Grandfather grasped me by the hand, and I saw that his worn blue eyes
had moistened.

I drew out my baggage check and ran to get my small trunk, which I
dragged forward while grandfather backed the wagon up to the platform.
We drove off much reassured in each other; and I remember still that the
old gentleman's kind words stirred me to an impulsive boyish resolve
never to disappoint his confidence; but it was a resolve that I often
lost sight of in the years that followed.

Presently our road led along the shore of the Pennesseewassee, past
woodland and farms, mile on mile, with the lake often in sight. I was
much interested in watching the loons, and also a long raft of peeled
hemlock logs which four men were laboriously poling down the lake to the
saw-mills.

After a time grandfather began to talk more cheerily; he spoke of
farming and of town affairs to me as if I were older; and once or twice
he called me Edmund, although that was not my name; but I did not
correct the mistake; I thought that I could do that some other time.

"There will be six of you now," he said, "six cousins, all in one
family; and all not far from the same age." Then he asked me my age.
"Twelve, almost thirteen," I replied. "Why, I thought you were
fourteen," he said. "Well, now Addison is fifteen, or sixteen, and
Theodora is near fourteen. Addison is a good boy and a boy of character,
studious and scholarly. I do not know what his learning may lead to;
sometimes I am afraid that he is imbibing infidelic doctrines; but he is
a boy of good principles whom I would trust in anything. He is your
Uncle William's son, you know, and came to our house two years ago,
after his father's death at Shiloh. Theodora came at about the same
time; she is your Aunt Adelaide's daughter. Poor Adelaide had to send
her home to me after your Uncle Robert's death at Chancellorsville.
Theodora is a noble-hearted child, womanly and considerate in all her
ways; and she is as good a scholar as Addison.

"Then there's Halstead." Grandfather paused; and looking up in his face,
I saw that a less cheery expression had come there. "Sometimes I do not
know what to do with Halstead," grandfather remarked, at last. "He is a
strange boy and has a very un