Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/317

 advice. 'Peter, what'll I do?' he says, 'what'll I do?'

"'Why, just wait, Harvey. He'll live. Just wait,' I told him."

Caroline listened with interest. He might have been talking to his equal in years, from his tone.

"Then, oddly enough," he continued, "here's my old friend in the big house up yonder—and she is old—and what do you think she's worried about? She's afraid she won't die! 'Oh, Peter,' she says to me—she's fond of me because I'm the same age as a little boy of hers that died—'it seems to me that I can't wait, Peter! What shall I do?' she says. And I tell her to wait. 'Dear old friend,' said I to her last night, 'it will come. It's bound to come. Just be patient.'"

He paused and knocked his pipe empty.

"Now, as to your case," he said, "I know how you feel. I'm sorry for you—by the Lord, I'm sorry for you! But what's the use of running away? You'll keep on growing up, you know. It's one of the things that doesn't stop. You