It was the best thing that could be
done. My father would have been glad to return to his old mode of
bachelor life, but what could he do with two little children? He needed
a woman to take care of him, and who so fitting as his wife's elder
sister? So she had the charge of me from my birth; and for a time I was
weakly, as was but natural, and she was always beside me, night and day
watching over me, and my father nearly as anxious as she. For his land
had come down from father to son for more than three hundred years, and
he would have cared for me merely as his flesh and blood that was to
inherit the land after him. But he needed something to love, for all
that, to most people, he was a stern, hard man, and he took to me as, I
fancy, he had taken to no human being before--as he might have taken to
my mother, if she had had no former life for him to be jealous of. I
loved him back again right heartily. I loved all around me, I believe,
for everybody was kind to me. After a time, I overcame my original
weakness of constitution, and was just a bonny, strong-looking lad whom
every passer-by noticed, when my father took me with him to the nearest
town.


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