Frank Wilson, a nice boy, the son of a neighboring planter, was my father’s bookkeeper and an inmate of our house. He was very kind to me, and had won a lasting place in my regard as the maker of the very best whistles and fifes of chincapin bark of any one I had ever known. They piped more shrilly and held their shape longer than those turned out by my father and by various visitors who paid court to my young lady cousins through me. So I looked anxiously at the alleged sufferer, startled and pained by the announcement of his affliction. He was eating his breakfast composedly, and answered my father’s “Good-morning—and is that true, my boy?” with a pleasant laugh. There was not a sign of the invalid in look, action, or tone. “I can’t deny it, sir!” I slipped into my chair beside him, receiving a caressing pat on the hand I laid on his arm, and hearkened with greedy ears for further particulars of the case, never asking a question. Children of that generation were trained to make their ears and eyes do duty for the tongue. I comprehended but a tithe of the ensuing conversation. I made out that the mysterious fever did not affect Frank’s appetite and general health, but that it involved the necessity of his leaving us for a long time. He might never come back. His proviso in this direction was, “If I do as well as I hope to do out there.” When he had excused himself and left the table, my father startled me yet more by his answer to my mother’s remark: “We shall miss him. He is a nice boy!” Her husband stirred his coffee meditatively for a moment before saying, without looking up: “I am not sure that I have not a touch of that same fever myself.” With the inconsequence of infancy, I did not connect the speech with our breaking up the Lunenburg home the next autumn and setting out for what was explained to us girls as a round of visits to friends in Richmond and Powhatan.