Read Online Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt - Free Book Online Page B

opus was being done in longhand.
    I slept rather late the next morning and when I opened my eyes, I saw the folded white paper which had been slipped underneath my door. I jumped out of bed to pick it up and then propped myself comfortably against the pillows in order to enjoy whatever it was that I was about to read.
    The letter read as follows:
    Dear Julie:
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    What you were seeking tonight was a good, gray uncle, full of wisdom, and you came to an uncle who is neither good nor gray nor very wise.
    I am annoyed with you, my sweet. I do not like stepping out of character even for a little niece who kisses me good night and, by that token, makes a vapid old fool of me. But I’ll be for a few minutes your good, gray uncle, full of wisdom. I’ll say to my sad-faced little Julie: Guilt feelings will do nothing for either you or the Kilpin child. But your compassion as you grow into womanhood may well become immortality for the girl you call “Aggie.”
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    Uncle Haskell
    I read his letter several times and then secreted it in the little leather box where I hid other treasures. Hopefully, I half expected to find a changed Uncle Haskell that morning, a man who had given up lying and drinking and had awakened to his responsibilities to society. But he hadn’t changed; he did not show by a single glance that he remembered the note he had written to me.

5
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    U ncle Haskell had mentioned the name of Jonathan Eltwing once or twice; Mrs. Peters had also spoken of him in a mysterious way as if she didn’t want Aunt Cordelia to overhear her. Once I had grown bold enough to say quite casually, “Do you know a man named Jonathan Eltwing, Aunt Cordelia?”
    She hadn’t blinked an eye. She said very smoothly, “I knew him a number of years ago, Julia. Why do you ask?”
    I was embarrassed then and ill at ease. “I just wondered,” I said.
    â€œThen it was an idle question, wasn’t it?”
    â€œYes, ma’am,” I answered and resolved never to get myself out on such a limb again.
    But when I went to help Laura out the fall little Julie was born, I remembered to ask her what she knew about this character, Jonathan Eltwing. Mother had long ago told Laura all about the man who, she suspected, had once been Aunt Cordelia’s sweetheart. I listened, agog with interest, as Laura repeated the story to me.
    Jonathan Eltwing was about Aunt Cordelia’s age, which meant that he must have been eighteen the fall she commenced teaching in the country school. She was still teaching in the same school thirty-five years later, when Chris and I with all the others sat at the wooden desks and watched her firm hand write out instructions and examples on the blackboard.
    He had come to school that fall, this awkward, earnest boy who towered above the young teacher, and he confided in her the hope that someday he might be able to go to college, although the hope was dim for he had neither money nor the prerequisite high school training. The father of the Eltwing children had little use for higher learning, and was unwilling either to pay for their schooling or to allow himself to be deprived of the benefits of their labor on his farm. However, he had made one foolish mistake: he had married a woman who had a hunger for learning, and every one of their six children was born with her intelligence and was later stimulated by her to seek an education. Jonathan was the first; encouraged by his mother and Aunt Cordelia, he broke with his father and started the climb which was to lead to the finest universities of the country and to the highest academic honors. The other five, one by one, followed him.
    Aunt Cordelia had been immediately fired by anger against the father and sympathy for the son. She had family problems of her own, even at eighteen, but she turned them aside that winter and gave herself up fully to the project of getting Jonathan Eltwing ready for his college