A Father for Philip Read Online Free

exactly as you look today. It was the day she told me you
were on the way. I picked her up and carried her back to the house and from
that moment on I looked after her, cared for her as if she was made of glass...
And what good did it do me? But I have you, girl, to take her place. So like
her you are, Ellie, so—”
    “Dad,” Eleanor interrupted gently. “The
man on the forestry road?”
    “What? Oh, yes. I’ll go take a look, see
what I can do.”
    “He said his engine overheated and now
it won’t start.”
    “Right. Probably sprung a leak in the
radiator. I’ll take a bucket and fill it from the creek over that way.”
    She watched with a deep affection as her
father walked away, slightly bent yet still moving strongly for all his years.
    Having never known her mother, except
through her father’s stories, which he repeated over and over to her, as if
afraid he might forget, Eleanor had what may have been more than the usual
amount of love for her dad, and he, on his part, loved his daughter beyond all
else. She was his life.
    When he had been left a widower with an
infant daughter to raise, he had flatly refused all offers of help from the
neighbors, according to the late Mrs. Anderson from the neighboring farm. Many
times her father had told her raising her was no trouble. He merely did it the
way he would’ve raised orphaned calf, with good common sense, plenty of food
and exercise, and outsized portions of love. She always laughed at that and
asked if he really felt affection for orphaned calves, and read them bedtime
stories, hugged them and cuddled them like he did her. “Of course, I did. All
young things need hugs and pats so they know someone cares about them. It
worked on the calves, and it had worked on her.
    Eleanor had grown up knowing little
beyond her own immediate locality, and if a longing built in her now and then
for far places and new sights, as it had this morning, she would always push it
back and look around, happy with her lot.
    When Eleanor finished high school and
graduated with honors and talked about further education, the expression on her
father’s face had quickly changed her mind. Her guidance counselor argued that
every woman needed a university education. She’d been tempted, of course. The
thought of fusty old professors and exciting, younger, ones, huge libraries
filled with the knowledge of the world, of parties, roommates and dormitory
life had sounded like heaven to her, and what would— must —come after… Learning about the world, seeing it for herself…
All that had been brought tantalizingly close by her counselor’s words, but her
dad had sacrificed so much already, she couldn’t bear to leave him like this.
As compensation, he’d brought in cable TV and finally, the Internet, though
that meant putting up a satellite dish on the barn roof.
    She had become a wonderful cook over the
years of her teens, an excellent housekeeper. She sewed, knit, gardened. Her
flowers were a riot of color, her vegetables abundant and flavorful, and she
worked long hard hours willingly beside her aging father, helping him to run
his dairy farm. Throughout her high school years, and in the past year, since
she had been at home all day boys and young men had come to call, but each came
only once, until there were no more left to come at all and Eleanor became as
much of a recluse as her father.
    But today! And Eleanor wrapped her arms
around herself, spun in a dizzying circle, and laughed aloud at the hens
scattering and cackling in her path. Today she had met someone whom she knew
would not be put off by her irascible old father.
    How can it happen like this? she
wondered. And what is it, exactly that has happened?
    She knew a little later when a Forestry
Service pickup truck drove into the barnyard and the lanky young man climbed
out. Her father got out of the passenger side and the two men stood talking for
some time. Suddenly the young man put a hand to his head, swayed on his