Big Brother
A >> Annie Fellows Johnston >> Big BrotherAll the brightness and purpose seemed to drop out of her life the day
that little Dorothy was taken away. Her husband had tried everything
in his power to arouse her from her hopeless despondency, but she
refused to be comforted.
Steven's trouble had touched the first responsive chord. She looked
down into his expectant face, feeling that she could not bear to
disappoint him, yet unwilling to make a promise that involved personal
exertion.
Then she answered slowly, "I wish my husband were here. I cannot give
you an answer without consulting him. Then, you see the society that
sent you out here probably has some written agreement with these
people, and if they do not want to give him up we might find it a
difficult matter to get him. Mr. Estel will be home in a few days, and
he will see what can be done."
That morning when Steven had been seized with a sudden impulse to find
Mrs. Estel he had no definite idea of what she could do to help him.
It had never occurred to him for an instant that she would offer to
take either of them to live with her. He thought only of that
afternoon on the train, when her sympathy had comforted him so much,
and of her words at parting: "If you ever need a friend, dear, or are
in trouble of any kind, let me know and I will help you." It was that
promise that lured him on all that weary way through the cold
snow-storm.
With a child's implicit confidence he turned to her, feeling that in
some way or other she would make it all right. It was a great
disappointment when he found she could do nothing immediately, and
that it might be weeks before he could see Robin again.
Still, after seeing her and pouring out his troubles, he felt like a
different boy. Such a load seemed lifted from his shoulders. He
actually laughed while repeating some of Robin's queer little speeches
to her. Only that morning he had felt that he could not even smile
again.
Dinner cheered him up still more. When the storm had abated, Mrs.
Estel wrapped him up and sent him home in her sleigh, telling him that
she wanted him to spend Thanksgiving Day with her. She thought she
would know by that time whether she could take Robin or not. At any
rate, she wanted him to come, and if he would tell Mr. Dearborn to
bring her a turkey on his next market day, she would ask his
permission.
All the way home Steven wondered nervously what the old people would
say to him. He dreaded to see the familiar gate, and the ride came to
an end so very soon. To his great relief he found that they had
scarcely noticed his absence. Their only son and his family had come
unexpectedly from the next State to stay over Thanksgiving, and
everything else had been forgotten in their great surprise.
The days that followed were full of pleasant anticipations for the
family. Steven went in and out among them, helping busily with the
preparations, but strangely silent among all the merriment.
Mr. Dearborn took his son to town with him the next market day, and
Steven was left at home to wait and wonder what message Mrs. Estel
might send him.
He hung around until after his usual bedtime, on their return, but
could not muster up courage to ask. The hope that had sprung up
within him flickered a little fainter each new day, until it almost
died out.
It was a happy group that gathered around the breakfast table early on
Thanksgiving morning.
"All here but Rindy," said Mr. Dearborn, looking with smiling eyes
from his wife to his youngest grandchild. "It's too bad she couldn't
come, but Arad invited all his folks to spend the day there; so she
had to give up and stay at home. Well, we're all alive and well,
anyhow. That's my greatest cause for thankfulness. What's yours,
Jane?" he asked, nodding towards his wife.
As the question passed around the table, Steven's thoughts went back
to the year before, when their little family had all been together. He
remembered how pretty his mother had looked that morning in her
dark-blue dress. There was a bowl of yellow chrysanthemums blooming on
the table, and a streak of sunshine, falling across them and on
Robin's hair, seemed to turn them both to gold. Now he was all alone.
The contrast was too painful. He slipped from the table unobserved,
and stole noiselessly up the back stairs to his room. The little
checked apron was hanging on a chair by the window. He sat down and
laid his face against it, but his eyes were dry. He had not cried any
since that first dreadful night.
There was such a lively clatter of dishes downstairs and babel of
voices that he did not hear a sleigh drive up in the soft snow.
"Steven," called Mr. Dearborn from the foot of the stairs, "I promised
Mrs. Estel to let you spend the day with her, but there was so much
goin' on I plum forgot to tell you. You're to stay all night too, she
says."
The ride to town seemed endless to the impatient boy. He was burning
with a feverish anxiety to know about Robin, but the driver whom he
questioned could not tell.
"Mrs. Estel will be down presently," was the message with which he was
ushered into the long drawing-room. He sat down uncomfortably on the
edge of a chair to wait. He almost dreaded to hear her coming for fear
she might tell him that the Piersons would not give Robin up. Maybe
her husband had not come home when she expected him. Maybe he had been
too busy to attend to the matter. A dozen possible calamities
presented themselves.
Unconsciously he held himself so rigid in his expectancy that he
fairly ached. Ten minutes dragged by, with only the crackle of the
fire on the hearth to disturb the silence of the great room.
Then light feet pattered down the stairs and ran across the broad
hall. The _portiere_ was pushed aside and a bright little face looked
in. In another instant Robin's arms were around his neck, and he was
crying over and over in an ecstasy of delight, "Oh, it's Big Brother!
It's Big Brother!"
Not far away down the avenue a great church organ was rolling out its
accompaniment to a Thanksgiving anthem. Steven could not hear the
words the choir chanted, but the deep music of the organ seemed to him
to be but the echo of what was throbbing in his own heart.
There was no lack of childish voices and merry laughter in the great
house that afternoon. A spirit of thanksgiving was in the very
atmosphere. No one could see the overflowing happiness of the children
without sharing it in some degree.
More than once during dinner Mrs. Estel looked across the table at her
husband and smiled as she had not in months.
Along in the afternoon the winter sunshine tempted the children out of
doors, and they commenced to build a snow man. They tugged away at the
huge image, with red cheeks and sparkling eyes, so full of
out-breaking fun that the passers-by stopped to smile at the sight.
Mrs. Estel stood at the library window watching them. Once, when
Robin's fat little legs stumbled and sent him rolling over in the
snow, she could not help laughing at the comical sight.
It was a low, gentle laugh, but Mr. Estel heard, and, laying aside his
newspaper, joined her at the window. He had almost despaired of ever
seeing a return to the old sunny charm of face and manner.
[Illustration]
They stood there together in silence a few moments, watching the two
romping boys, who played on, unconscious of an audience.
"What a rare, unselfish disposition that little 'Big Brother' has!"
Mr. Estel said presently. "It shows itself even in their play." Then
he added warmly, turning to his wife, "Dora, it would be downright
cruel to send him away from that little chap."
He paused a moment. "We used to find our greatest pleasure in making
Dorothy happy. We lavished everything on her. Now we can never do
anything more for her."
There was another long pause, while he turned his head away and looked
out of the window.
"Think what a lifelong happiness it is in our power to give those
children! Dora, can't we make room for both of them for her sake?"
Mrs. Estel hesitated, then laid both her hands in his, bravely smiling
back her tears. "Yes, I'll try," she said, "for little Dorothy's
sake."
That night, as Steven undressed Robin and tucked him up snugly in the
little white bed, he felt that nothing could add to his great
happiness. He sat beside him humming an old tune their mother had
often sung to them, in the New Jersey home so far away.
The blue eyes closed, but still he kept on humming softly to himself,
"Oh, happy day! happy day!"
Presently Mrs. Estel came in and drew a low rocking-chair up to the
fire. Steven slipped from his place by Robin's pillow and sat down on
the rug beside her.
Sitting there in the fire-light, she told him all about her visit to
the Piersons. They had found Robin so unmanageable and so different
from what they expected that they were glad to get rid of him. Mr.
Estel had arranged matters satisfactorily with the Society, and they
had brought Robin home several days ago.
"I had a long talk with Mr. Dearborn the other day," she continued.
"He said his wife's health is failing, and their son is trying to
persuade them to break up housekeeping and live with them. If she is
no better in the spring, they will probably do so."
"Would they want me to go?" asked Steven anxiously.
"It may be so; I cannot tell."
Steven looked up timidly. "I've been wanting all day to say thank you,
the way I feel it; but somehow, the right words won't come. I can't
tell you how it is, but it seems 'most like sending Robin back home
for you and Mr. Estel to have him. Somehow, your ways and everything
seem so much like mamma's and papa's, and when I think about him
having such a lovely home, oh, it just seems like this is a
Thanksgiving Day that will last _always_!"
She drew his head against her knee and stroked it tenderly. "Then how
would you like to live here yourself, dear?" she asked. "Mr. Estel
thinks that we need two boys."
"Oh, does he really want me, too? It's too good to be true!" Steven
was kneeling beside her now, his eyes shining like stars.
"Yes, we both want you," answered Mrs. Estel. "You shall be our own
little sons."
Steven crept nearer. "Papa and mamma will be so glad," he said in a
tremulous whisper. Then a sudden thought illuminated his earnest face.
"O Mrs. Estel! Don't you suppose they have found little Dorothy in
that other country by this time, and are taking care of her there,
just like you are taking care of us here?"
She put her arm around him, and drew him nearer, saying: "My dear
little comfort, it may be so. If I could believe that, I could never
feel so unhappy again."
Robin and "ze black dancin' bear" were not the only ones tucked
tenderly away to sleep that night.
The sleigh bells jingled along the avenue. Again the great church
organ rolled out a mighty flood of melody, that ebbed and flowed on
the frosty night air.
And Big Brother, with his head pillowed once more beside Robin's, lay
with his eyes wide open, too happy to sleep--lay and dreamed of the
time when he should be a man, and could gather into the great house he
meant to own all the little homeless ones in the wide world; all the
sorry little waifs that strayed through the streets of great cities,
that crowded in miserable tenements, that lodged in asylums and
poorhouses.
Into his child's heart he gathered them all, with a sweet
unselfishness that would have gladly shared with every one of them his
new-found home and happiness.
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