and honor, that I am proud to
have been his friend, and would rather leave my children the legacy he
leaves his than the largest fortune ever made. Yes! Simple, generous
goodness is the best capital to found the business of this life upon. It
lasts when fame and money fail, and is the only riches we can take out
of this world with us. Remember that, my boys; and if you want to earn
respect and confidence and love follow in the footsteps of John Brooke."

When Demi returned to school, after some weeks at home, he seemed to
have recovered from his loss with the blessed elasticity of childhood,
and so he had in a measure; but he did not forget, for his was a nature
into which things sank deeply, to be pondered over, and absorbed into
the soil where the small virtues were growing fast. He played and
studied, worked and sang, just as before, and few suspected any change;
but there was one and Aunt Jo saw it for she watched over the boy with
her whole heart, trying to fill John's place in her poor way. He seldom
spoke of his loss, but Aunt Jo often heard a stifled sobbing in the
little bed at night; and when she went to comfort him, all his cry was,
"I want my father! oh, I want my father!" for the tie between the two
had been a very tender one, and the child's heart bled when it was
broken. But time was kind to him, and slowly he came to feel that father
was not lost, only invisible for a while, and sure to be found again,
well and strong and fond as ever, even though his little son should see
the purple asters blossom on his grave many, many times before they met.
To this belief Demi held fast, and in it found both help and comfort,
because it led him unconsciously through a tender longing for the father
whom he had seen to a childlike trust in the Father whom he had not
seen. Both were in heaven, and he prayed to both, trying to be good for
love of them.

The outward change corresponded to the inward, for in those few weeks
Demi seemed to have grown tall, and began to drop his childish plays,
not as if ashamed of them, as some boys do, but as if he had outgrown
them, and wanted something manlier. He took to the hated arithmetic,
and held on so steadily that his uncle was charmed, though he could not
understand the whim, until Demi said,

"I am going to be a bookkeeper when I grow up, like papa, and I must
know about figures and things, else I can't have nice, neat ledgers like
his."

At another time he came to his aunt