Page:Anna Chapin--Half a dozen boys.djvu/136

118 themselves in the library, where Bess read aloud to the child, explaining as she read, and  he listened eagerly, delighted at being able to break away from his forced inaction. Bess found him an apt pupil, and added to their  other studies many simple lessons in the natural sciences, teaching the boy to understand the  world around him, as well as to see it through  her eyes. As college was out of the question for the lad, she tried to teach him just those  facts that would be of the most interest and  use to him, throwing aside any formal “course” of study, and only endeavoring to answer the  questions that came up in the course of their readings. And such questions! Any young, healthy boy of ordinary intelligence can ask a surprising and perplexing number of questions;  but Fred, shut up within himself as he was, with plenty of time for quiet thought, surpassed them all, and often sent his tutor on a wild search through encyclopæias and dictionaries, for a clear explanation of some knotty  point.

All this time Rob had been very neighborly, for it had always been his habit to run in to see