“Austin, you could get along very well with the children if I were to be gone a few weeks, could you not?” he asked one day. “I am not feeling well, and it is so lonely here that I am not myself. Perhaps if I could have an outing, I should be better able to endure it.”
Though Austin was but a child, he knew that his father was acting very selfishly in going away at this time, and that his real desire for going was to avoid responsibility rather than to cure loneliness. Many thoughts pressed in upon the boy as he contemplated his father’s long absence, but the thought that gave him an answer was that if he refused, the home might be broken up. He seemed to see his mother’s face, and it encouraged him to be brave. It was only a moment that he hesitated in answering, “Yes, Papa, I think I could manage all right; I might have to miss school part of the time.”
“Well, I shall go with some of the boys down into the hills for a while to see if I can not get straightened out so that I shall be more fit for work. Your uncle John will look after you and see that nothing happens to you.”
So the matter was settled. In a few days Henry Hill was off for a month of pleasure, leaving the children in Austin’s care. He was right in thinking that his brother-in-law, John Moore, would look after the children. Mr. Moore was a brother to the children’s mother and had the same noble principles as she had. He would gladly have taken the entire care of the children, but he thought it was their father’s place to have their oversight, so stood back and said little. But when he knew they were left alone in the farmhouse, he was careful to know each morning and evening that all was well with them.
“Austin is as steady and reliable as a little old man,” said his uncle after one of his visits. “He manages things over there as well as many an older person could.”
“How a father could put so much on a mere child is a mystery,” said some of the neighbor women.
“I would hate to be tied to a kitchen and a row of babies like he is,” was his cousin Frank’s opinion.
But of all these comments Austin was ignorant, nor did he think he was doing anything brave. He was doing the one thing that would keep the children together, and was encouraged with the thought that his mother was pleased with him, for it seemed to him that she knew.