Grandfather smiled and looked at me again. "Yes, you are quite a boy!" he said. "If you are as good a boy as your father was, your coming may prove a blessing instead of an additional tax on us." I felt much gratified that he considered me "quite a boy," and said that I knew so many of us must be a great care; but that I meant to do my best and to take my father's place with him, if he ever needed a son. (More of my good mother's ideas, rather than my own, I am afraid.) Unwittingly I had touched a pleasant chord, albeit a sad one. Grandfather grasped me by the hand, and I saw that his worn blue eyes had moistened. I drew out my baggage check and ran to get my small trunk, which I dragged forward while grandfather backed the wagon up to the platform. We drove off much reassured in each other; and I remember still that the old gentleman's kind words stirred me to an impulsive boyish resolve never to disappoint his confidence; but it was a resolve that I often lost sight of in the years that followed. Presently our road led along the shore of the Pennesseewassee, past woodland and farms, mile on mile, with the lake often in sight. I was much interested in watching the loons, and also a long raft of peeled hemlock logs which four men were laboriously poling down the lake to the saw-mills. After a time grandfather began to talk more cheerily; he spoke of farming and of town affairs to me as if I were older; and once or twice he called me Edmund, although that was not my name; but I did not correct the mistake; I thought that I could do that some other time. "There will be six of you now," he said, "six cousins, all in one family; and all not far from the same age." Then he asked me my age. "Twelve, almost thirteen," I replied. "Why, I thought you were fourteen," he said. "Well, now Addison is fifteen, or sixteen, and Theodora is near fourteen. Addison is a good boy and a boy of character, studious and scholarly. I do not know what his learning may lead to; sometimes I am afraid that he is imbibing infidelic doctrines; but he is a boy of good principles whom I would trust in anything. He is your Uncle William's son, you know, and came to our house two years ago, after his father's death at Shiloh. Theodora came at about the same time; she is your Aunt Adelaide's daughter. Poor Adelaide had to send her home to me after your Uncle Robert's death at Chancellorsville. Theodora is a noble-hearted child, womanly and considerate in all her ways; and she is as good a scholar as Addison.