"O, it must be so hard for you to be alone so! Have you no sisters?"
"Sisters! I would tell you of one so proud, and rich, and in fashion, that her great house has no room in it for a rusty old brother like me!"
Frank thought of his own sisters--of Hattie, who was gone, and of Helen, who, though she should wed a prince, would never, he was sure, shut her doors against him; and he was filled with pity for the poor old man.
"I had one, who was a fast friend enough when he was poor and I had a little property. But I became responsible for his debts, which he left me to pay; then I was poor, whilst he grew rich and hated me!"
"Of course! We may forgive those who wrong us, but not those we have wronged. He never forgave me for having been robbed by him!" And the old man's voice grew hard and ironical at the recollection.
"Why didn't you ever get married?" asked Frank. "You have one of the best, biggest hearts in the world, and you ought to have loved somebody with it. Didn't you ever?"
The spirit of the old man shrank sensitively within him for a moment. Then he said to himself, "He will know of it some day, and I may as well tell him." For the heart that had been frozen for years this youth had had power to thaw.
"I never loved--any woman--well enough to marry her. But there was once a little girl that I had known from her cradle--for I was many years older than she. I used to pet her, and tell her stories, and sing and play to her, until I became more bound up in her than was very wise for one who was not her father or her brother. Well, she got to be of your age, and still ran to kiss me when I came, and never guessed what was growing up in my heart and taking possession of me, for it was stronger than I, and stronger than all the world. I saw her fast becoming a woman, and forgot that I was at the same time fast becoming an old man. And one day I asked her to marry me. I did not mean then, but in a few years. But she did not stop to hear my explanations. She sprang from me with a scream. And that ended it. She could never be to me again the innocent pet she had been, and as for being what I wished--I saw at once how absurd the proposal was! I saw that from that time she could regard me only with astonishment and laughter. I was always extremely sensitive, and this affair, with the other I have told you of, proved too much for me. I fled from society. I enlisted as a drummer, and I suppose I shall never be any thing but a drummer now. And this, my boy, is the reason I was never married."