He was rejoiced now that she seemed to be turning to him
for companionship; and very eagerly he accepted all the time she could
give him.
William had, in truth, been growing more and more lonely ever since
Billy's brief stay beneath his roof years before. Those few short weeks
of her merry presence had shown him how very forlorn the house was
without it. More and more sorrowfully during past years, his thoughts
had gone back to the little white flannel bundle and to the dear hopes
it had carried so long ago. If the boy had only lived, thought William,
mournfully, there would not now have been that dreary silence in his
home, and that sore ache in his heart.
Very soon after William had first seen Billy, he began to lay wonderful
plans, and in every plan was Billy. She was not his child by flesh and
blood, he acknowledged, but she was his by right of love and needed
care. In fancy he looked straight down the years ahead, and everywhere
he saw Billy, a loving, much-loved daughter, the joy of his life, the
solace of his declining years.
To no one had William talked of this--and to no one did he show the
bitterness of his grief when he saw his vision fade into nothingness
through Billy's unchanging refusal to live in his home. Only he himself
knew the heartache, the loneliness, the almost unbearable longing of
the past winter months while Billy had lived at Hillside; and only he
himself knew now the almost overwhelming joy that was his because of
what he thought he saw in Billy's changed attitude toward himself.
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