No answer came, so going to the Boy’s room, the great south chamber that had been the child’s mother’s, and finding it empty, Ernest went on to his own, where in a heap on the floor, his head buried in the white-knitted quilt, half crouched, half knelt the Boy. At first Ernest was startled, thinking the child was ill, or had perhaps picked and eaten something poisonous. But as he turned his face up to his half-brother, the expression was of misery of mind, not body.
Sitting in the low rush-bottomed rocker, Ernest drew the Boy to him tenderly, so that the pale, downcast face rested against his shoulder. Raising it gently in his hands, he said, “What is it, Asa? tell big brother.”
“I can’t, oh, I can’t say it,” sobbed the child, yet without shedding a tear. “It’s the Brown boys that told me, and their mother _knows_ it’s true.”
(As the widow Brown had made desperate but unsuccessful efforts to become his housekeeper instead of Aunt Louisa, and annex her unruly brood to his household, Ernest quickly conjectured the report that had reached the Boy.)
“Very well, then, if little brother cannot say it, big brother must try; only look up and say Yes and No, so that he may know that he is guessing right. They said, perhaps, that I am going away and that you are going to live far off with strangers?”
“They said that everything here belongs to me and nothing to you?”
“They told you that one day I would marry some one who was very beautiful, like a princess in a fairy tale, and that I should not care for you any more?”
“Yes, oh, yes, that was the worst of all!”
“I have also heard all this, but it is not true.”
“And you want me for always?” said the child, now standing before him and searching the man’s very soul with his solemn brown eyes.
“Only God and your mother know how much.”
“Can I bring my bed right in here close to yours, and put my story-books in the little shelves by yours, and just keep that big lonely room to play in when it’s wet? Yes?”
Then, clasping his arms tight around the man’s neck in an ecstasy of relief, he whispered, “Can I have one more wish, just one more?”
“What is it, Boy? You must name it first, in fair play, you know.”
“May I call you daddy? Boys can have lots of brothers, but a daddy’s very special, and there’s never only one of him, just like you.”