atmosphere partaking of childhood hung
around him.

I knew Uncle Dick's outward history as the Bayside people knew it. It
was not a very eventful one. He had lost his father in boyhood; before
that there had been some idea of Dick's going to college. After his
father's death he seemed quietly to have put all such hopes away and
settled down to look after the farm and take care of his invalid
stepmother. This woman, as I learned from others, but never from Uncle
Dick, had been a peevish, fretful, exacting creature, and for nearly
thirty years Uncle Dick had been a very slave to her whims and
caprices.

"Nobody knows what he had to put up with, for he never complained,"
Mrs. Lindsay, my landlady, told me. "She was out of her mind once and
she was liable to go out of it again if she was crossed in anything.
He was that good and patient with her. She was dreadful fond of him
too, for all she did almost worry his life out. No doubt she was the
reason he never married. He couldn't leave her and he knew no woman
would go in there. Uncle Dick never courted anyone, unless it was Rose
Lawrence. She was a cousin of my man's. I've heard he had a kindness
for her; it was years ago, before I came to Bayside. But anyway,
nothing came of it. Her father's health failed and he had to go out to
California. Rose had to go with him, her mother being dead, and that
was the end of Uncle Dick's love affair."

But that was not the end of it, as I discovered when Uncle Dick gave
me his confidence. One evening I went over and, piloted by the sound
of shrieks and laughter, found Uncle Dick careering about the garden,
pursued by half a dozen schoolgirls who were pelting him with
overblown roses. At sight of the master my pupils instantly became
prim and demure and, gathering up their flowery spoil, they beat a
hasty retreat down the lane.

"Those little girls are very sweet," said Uncle Dick abruptly. "Little
blossoms of life! Have you ever wondered, Master, why I haven't some
of my own blooming about the old place instead of just looking over
the fence of other men's gardens, coveting their human roses?"

"Yes, I have," I answered frankly. "It has been a puzzle to me why
you, Uncle Dick, who seem to me fitted above all men I have ever known
for love and husbandhood and fatherhood, should have elected to live
your life alone."

"It has not been a matter of choice," said Uncle Dick gently. "We
can't always order our lives as we would, Master