Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/103

Rh named after her father. She also took the Kidders’ son, Daniel, a lad of fifteen, for a private pupil. He was an ambitious lad and later had a successful career in mechanics and railroad construction. He remembered with gratitude the help Mrs. Patterson gave him with his studies, especially in rudimentary mathematics and physics.

Dr. Patterson had kept up his itineracy while at Groton. He has a record for a certain sort of gallantry through the country and was once pursued to his home by an irate blacksmith whose wife was too attractive to the doctor. The less of this recounted is the better, save only that his unfitness as a husband be shown. His fortunes did not thrive. Although he mortgaged Mrs. Patterson’s furniture and articles of jewelry, he could not meet his payments on the little property. A certain farmer went to Tilton and took up the mortgage on the house, and then demanded possession of the mill. Dr. Patterson defied him with high words, and the villagers said they had a personal encounter. When Dr. Patterson saw the legal paper he prepared to remove, not only from the mill but from Groton.

Mrs. Tilton came over to remove her sister in a carriage. Together they drove down the mountain road. The village church bell was tolling, and Dr. Patterson’s enemy having got into the church, found this means of expressing his derision. The blind girl walked behind all the way to Rumney, a distance of six miles. She would not ride in the carriage where she could hear the sobs of her