Tom All-Alone

by Caroline Conrad

Mrs. Lester supposed that her husband was dead. He had gone off and left her and the babies to starve or not as they could.

Finally, five years after her desertion, news came that Fred Lester was dead—drowned while he was out fishing in a boat somewhere a long way off.

A year and a half after that Alice Lester married David Holmes.

He was a good man, and Alice was a good woman. They deserved each other. David Holmes was a plainer man than Fred Lester had been, not at all handsome, and not so accomplished or dashing as Alice’s first husband. But he was a solid, good fellow, well up in his profession—he was a doctor—and would have laid down his life for Alice. The children—two of them—loved him almost as well as they did their mother, and that speaks for itself as to the kind of man Holmes was.

He had a good income from his practice, and they lived well. They kept two women in the house—a chambermaid and cook—and a man to tend the garden, take care of the doctor’s horse, and do odd jobs.

The man was one the doctor had employed before he was married. He was called Jim Fetter.

One day Jim Fetter was sick, and sent another man in his place, and the doctor coming home late in the afternoon after an uncommonly hard round of visits, found the new man waiting to take his horse.

It was not like Dr. Holmes to have unreasonable prejudices, or indulge ridiculous fancies. He was a plain, straightforward, sensible fellow, with only one romance in his whole… Read More