Big Brother | Page 6

great while!"
One summer day can stretch out like a lifetime at life's beginning. It is
only at threescore and ten that we liken it to a weaver's shuttle.
It was in July when old John Dearborn drove to the station to meet the
children. Now the white August lilies were standing up sweet and tall
by the garden fence.
"Seems like we've been here 'most always," said Steven as they rustled
around in the hay hunting eggs. His face had lost its expression of
sadness, so pathetic in a child, as day after day Robin's little feet
pattered through the old homestead, and no one came to take him away.
Active outdoor life had put color in his face and energy into his
movements. Mr. Dearborn and his wife were not exacting in their
demands, although they found plenty for him to do. The work was all

new and pleasant, and Robin was with him everywhere. When he fed
the turkeys, when he picked up chips, when he drove the cows to
pasture, or gathered the vegetables for market, Robin followed him
everywhere, like a happy, dancing shadow.
[Illustration]
Then when the work was done there were the kittens in the barn and the
swing in the apple-tree. A pond in the pasture sailed their shingle boats.
A pile of sand, left from building the new ice-house, furnished material
for innumerable forts and castles. There was a sunny field and a green,
leafy orchard. How could they help but be happy? It was summer time
and they were together.
Steven's was more than a brotherly devotion. It was with almost the
tenderness of mother-love that he watched the shining curls dancing
down the walk as Robin chased the toads through the garden or played
hide-and-seek with the butterflies.
"No, the little fellow's scarcely a mite of trouble," Mrs. Dearborn would
say to the neighbors sometimes when they inquired. "Steven is real
handy about dressing him and taking care of him, so I just leave it
mostly to him."
Mrs. Dearborn was not a very observing woman or she would have
seen why he "was scarcely a mite of trouble." If there was never a
crumb left on the doorstep where Robin sat to eat his lunch, it was
because Big Brother's careful fingers had picked up every one. If she
never found any tracks of little bare feet on the freshly scrubbed
kitchen floor, it was because his watchful eyes had spied them first, and
he had wiped away every trace.
He had an instinctive feeling that if he would keep Robin with him he
must not let any one feel that he was a care or annoyance. So he never
relaxed his watchfulness in the daytime, and slept with one arm thrown
across him at night.
Sometimes, after supper, when it was too late to go outdoors again, the

restless little feet kicked thoughtlessly against the furniture, or the
meddlesome fingers made Mrs. Dearborn look at him warningly over
her spectacles and shake her head.
[Illustration]
Sometimes the shrill little voice, with its unceasing questions, seemed
to annoy the old farmer as he dozed over his weekly newspaper beside
the lamp. Then, if it was too early to go to bed, Steven would coax him
over in a corner to look at the book that Mrs. Estel had given him,
explaining each picture in a low voice that could not disturb the deaf
old couple.
It was at these times that the old feeling of loneliness came back so
overwhelmingly. Grandpa and Grandma, as they called them, were
kind in their way, but even to their own children they had been
undemonstrative and cold. Often in the evenings they seemed to draw
so entirely within themselves, she with her knitting and he with his
paper or accounts, that Steven felt shut out, and apart. "Just the
strangers within thy gates," he sometimes thought to himself. He had
heard that expression a long time ago, and it often came back to him.
Then he would put his arm around Robin and hug him up close, feeling
that the world was so big and lonesome, and that he had no one else to
care for but him.
Sometimes he took him up early to the little room under the roof, and,
lying on the side of the bed, made up more marvellous stories than any
the book contained.
Often they drew the big wooden rocking-chair close to the window, and,
sitting with their arms around each other, looked out on the moonlit
stillness of the summer night. Then, with their eyes turned starward,
they talked of the far country beyond; for Steven tried to keep
undimmed in Robin's baby memory a living picture of the father and
mother he was so soon