"This is your mother," he heard his uncle say.

Without rising or giving the child a word of welcome, the unfeeling woman
said to the uncle:

"What do you think of him?"

"I don't know what to think," was the uncle's answer. "He hasn't said a
word since Engler turned him over into my care, and I certainly tried hard
to get something out of him. All he did until I told him to come along was
to stare at me with those large brown eyes of his. While we were riding
along, though, he seemed to see everything there was to see, and by the way
he kept smiling to himself one would have supposed he was looking at a
circus."

Ah, could they have known the deep thoughts that had been passing through
the childish mind even upon that trip, they would have understood better
how to encourage him. With no consideration for the manner in which Edwin
had been shut away from the better class of society and the proper helps
that are usually thrown about the young, they at once gave him a low and
degraded place in their estimation and pronounced him dull, stupid, and
idiotic. All commands were given in a harsh tone and in such a manner that
he could not comprehend them.

Before going farther into the life of Edwin, it might be well to explain
that the uncle and his three small children were making their home with
Edwin's mother. The house in which they were living, although rented,
contained many comforts and even luxuries; for the mother, aside from her
pension-money, was being liberally paid by the uncle for keeping him and
his family. And Edwin's ignorance, as has already been inferred, was due to