The Family
come over Tom’s face—so much fairer now than
when he first arrived in Hamilton—if Kathleen
caught his hand and tried to squeeze it hard enoughto hurt, crying: “Oh, Tom, tell us about the time you and Roddy found the water hole dry, and then
afterward tell us about when the rattlesnake bit
Henry!” He would whisper: “Pretty soon,”
and after a while, through the open windows, the
Professor would hear them in the garden: the
laughter and exclamations of the little girls, and
that singularly individual voice of Tom’s—mature,
confident, seldom varying in pitch, but full of slight,
very moving modulations.
He couldn’t have wished for a better companion for his daughters, and they were teaching Tom things that he needed more than mathematics.
Sitting thus in his study, long afterward, St. Peter reflected that those first years, before Outland had done anything remarkable, were really the best of all. He liked to remember the charming groups of three he was always coming upon,—in the hammock swung between the linden-trees, in the window-seat, or before the dining-room fire. Oh, there had been fine times in this old house then: family festivals and hospitalities, little girls dancing in and out, Augusta coming and going, gay dresses hanging in his study at night, Christmas shopping and secrets and smothered laughter on the
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