to see if you always like her as well as you do now? Then, too, you’ll be older.”
“I’m old enough. Uncle Teddy, and I love her dearly. I am as old as the Kings of France used to be when they got married—I read it in Abbott’s history. But there’s the clock striking nine I must run or I shall get a tardy mark and perhaps she’ll want to see my certificate some time.”
So saying, he kissed me on the cheek and set off for school as fast as his legs could carry him. Oh, Love, omnivorous Love, that sparest neither the dotard leaning on his staff nor the boy with pantaloons buttoning on his jacket—omnipotent Love, that, after parents and teachers have failed, in one instant can make Billy try to become a good boy!
With both of my nephews hopelessly enamored and myself the confidant of both, I had my hands full. Daniel was generally dejected and distrustful; Billy buoyant and jolly. Daniel found it impossible to overcome his bashfulness, was spontaneous only in sonnets, brilliant only in bouquets. Billy was always coming to me with pleasant news, told in his slangy New York boy vernacular. One day he would exclaim: “Oh, I’m getting on prime! I got such a smile off her this morning as I went by the window!” Another day he wanted counsel how to get a valentine to her—because it was too big to shove in a lamppost and she might catch him if he left it on the steps, rang the bell, and ran away. Daniel wrote his
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