“So you watch, and don’t do it.”
“No siree.”
“Because Catherine’s a fine little girl, too.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Aren’t you, Catherine?” He smiled at her and she blushed with delight. Rufus liked Catherine so well, all of a sudden, that he smiled at her, and when she smiled back they were both happy and suddenly he was very much ashamed to have treated her so.
“I want to tell you two something,” they heard Mr. Starr’s quieted voice. They looked up at him. “Not because you’ll understand it now, but I have to, my heart’s full, and it’s you I want to tell. Maybe you’ll remember it later on. It is about your daddy. Because you never got a real chance to know him. Can I tell you?”
They nodded.
"Some people have a hard, hard time. No money, no good schooling. Scarcely enough food. Nothing that you children have, but good people to love them. Your daddy started like that. He didn’t have one thing. He had to work till it practicly killed him, for every little thing he ever got.
“Well, some of the greatest men start with nothing. Like Abraham Lincoln. You know who he was?”
“He was born in a log cabin,” Rufus said.
“That’s right, and he became the greatest man we’ve ever had.”
He said nothing for a moment and they wondered what he was going to tell them about their father.
“Somehow I never got a chance to know Jay-your father-well as I wish. I don’t think he ever knew how much I thought of him. Well I thought the world of him, Rufus and Catherine. My own wife and son couldn’t mean more to me I think.” He waited again. “I’m a pretty ordinary man myself,” he went on. “Not a bad one. Just ordinary. But I always
