On such a day Joshua Churchill lay dying. He could have died days
before had he cared to let himself do so. But he was holding on grimly
to the life he no longer valued and held off as grimly the death he
really craved. He was waiting for the coming of the boy who was so
soon to be the last of the Churchills.
He meant, this grim old man, to live long enough to greet the boy whom
he remembered first as a baby, then as a little chap of ten, and later
as a shy boy of seventeen.
Joshua Churchill had been to India several times. But he had never
stayed long. He said that no man who had spent the greater part of his
life in Green Valley could ever be happy or feel at home anywhere else.
Joshua Churchill went to India to see his daughter and grandson; but
mostly to coax that daughter's wonderful husband to give up his
fanatically zealous work among the heathen of the Orient and come and
live in peace and plenty in a little Yankee town where there was a drug
store and a post office and a mossy gray old stone church with a mellow
bell in its steeple.
The wonderful and big son-in-law always listened respectfully to his
big Yankee father-in-law. Then he would smile and point to the little
brown babies lying sick in their mothers' arms.
Pages:
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38