It was at supper that the terrible realization came to Abner Sawyer that Jimsy liked everything and every one rather too well. He liked the ham and he liked the biscuits, he accepted alarming quantities of marmalade with utter confidence in his digestion; his round eyes swept every nook of the prim old room and marveled at old-fashioned china and silver that might have come over in the Mayflower, and then again might not, and he continued irreverently unaware that the first citizen was president of the Lindon Bank and therefore not a person to be liked indiscriminately by urchins. Thanks to something in Aunt Judith's eyes, furtively concessional to boyhood, Jimsy had mislaid what little constraint and shyness he had had at first. His at-homeness might be gauged at a glance by the way he gazed at the biscuits.
"Dear me," said Aunt Judith, glancing from Jimsy to the biscuits to see which most threatened the other, "I—I scarcely think—I hardly know. Abner?"
Time, Abner, now to impress this urchin once for all with a show of power in terms he can understand!
Mr. Sawyer settled the trivial question of biscuits with dignity.
"James," he said. "You may have just one more biscuit."
And Aunt Judith nodded:
"Just as you say, my dear!" as she had been nodding effasively for thirty years.
Jimsy's eyes were very grateful and it came over the first citizen with sickening conviction that Jimsy, misinterpreting again, had regarded the biscuit as an overture instead of a show of power. Ridiculous indeed to have thrown about your neck the unwelcome chain of a boy's regard and then unintentionally to cement that chain—by a biscuit!
Abner Sawyer departed hastily for his lamp, his fire and his paper.
Jimsy followed Aunt Judith to the kitchen and here, in the shining quiet of an old-fashioned kitchen whose spotless rows of pans and its rocker by the window reflected nothing of first citizenship, the memory-making mystery of child and woman in a homely setting drew taut an age-old chord of sympathy. Out of the hum of the kettle and the fire-shadows of the grate it came, out of the winter wind that rattled the checkerpaned windows—that eternal something that is only given to women to understand. Jimsy did not know why Aunt Judith smiled or why the smile made his throat hurt a little. He only knew by her eyes that she liked him and that was enough.
"Aunt Judith," he blurted, "lemme—aw, lemme wipe your dishes."
But Aunt Judith, with the wisdom of women, knew that the best-behaved china is perversely given to leaping without warning out of the hands of any boy, to his utter consternation, and she patted him on the back.
"Bless your heart, Jimsy," she said, "there are so few I can do them myself in no time."
Jimsy!—not James! Jimsy felt that he must do something for Aunt Judith Sawyer or his throat would burst. So finding one leg at liberty, he furtively kicked the leg of the stove and hurt his toe, even as his eyes fell upon a depleted stock of kindlings in the wood-box.
"Well, then," he burst out in a glow of good-will, "lemme—lemme take Uncle Ab's job to-night an' get the wood."
Aunt Judith's horrified glance made him redden uncomfortably.
"Jimsy," she whispered hurriedly, "you—you must never—never call Mr. Sawyer—Uncle Ab. Nobody does."
"But," mumbled the boy, "ye—ye said folks call ye Aunt Judith, an'—an'—"
"It—it's different," faltered Aunt Judith. "I—I'm nobody in particular. Mr. Sawyer's a bank president, Jimsy, and I—I always get the wood myself." She opened the door and pointed to a woodpile glimmering out of the darkness with a rim of snow. "The kindlings are split and piled in the shed. And hurry, child. The wind's sharp."
Jimsy set forth with a noisy whistle. When presently he returned with an armful of kindlings, his eyes were shining. And holding the door ajar, he coaxed into the warmth of Aunt Judith's kitchen a shivering dog, little and lame and thin.
"Aunt Judith," he shrilled, dropping his kindlings into the box with a clatter, "look! He was out there under the woodpile, shiverin,' an' he won't go away. He's a stray, too, like I was afore Mom Dorgan gave me a bed with her kids." He patted the dog's head. "Gee, watch him duck, poor mutt! That's cause he's been walloped so much. Aunt Judith," he blurted, his gray eyes ablaze with pleading, "can't ye maybe jus' let him sleep behind the stove? He's so sort of shivery I—I feel awful sorry fur him."
"No, no, no!" said Aunt Judith in distress. "I can't. I can't, indeed. Mr. Sawyer—"
"JAMES!"
Aunt Judith and Jimsy jumped. The first citizen stood in the doorway, the Lindon Evening News in his hand, still unread. Nor could he have explained why, save that a boy's absence may, queerly enough, be as clamorous as his presence. With the biscuit still upon his mind, Abner Sawyer felt impelled to discipline.
"Put the dog out!"
Jimsy stood his ground. He was used to that. And Abner Sawyer wondered with a feeling of intense annoyance what there was about this ragged, noisy child that injected drama into incident. There was a tenseness in the silence of the trio and the cringing dog.
"Aw, have a heart!" pleaded Jimsy finally, and there was faith and optimism in his steady glance.
Abner Sawyer cleared his throat and looked away. He wondered why he felt defensive.
"I am fully equipped with the organ you mention," he said drily. "Put the dog out."
Jimsy reluctantly obeyed, and as the door closed upon the shivering little waif who scratched and whined at the door of his lost Paradise, Jimsy's face, sharpened by disappointment, seemed suddenly thinner and less boyish. Bent upon making the best of things, he reached for his cap.
"Well," he said casually, "guess I'll go out and look the burg over."
It was queer how Jimsy's conversation seemed to bristle with verbal shocks. Aunt Judith gasped. Mr. Sawyer fixed a stern eye upon the clock.
"It is eight o'clock," he said in what seemed to Jimsy's puzzled comprehension a midnight tone of voice; "you will go to bed."
Dumfounded, Jimsy followed Aunt Judith up to bed. Here in a great, old-fashioned bedroom he forgot everything in an eager contemplation of a whirling, feathery background to his window.
"Aunt Judith," he called excitedly, "it's snowin'. Gee, that's Christmasy, ain't it! I don't mind the snow at all s'long's I got a bed cinched." His eager face lengthened. "Wisht Stump had a bed," he finished wistfully.
"Stump?"
"I jus' called him Stump, Aunt Judith, 'cause he didn't have no tail." Aunt Judith's eyes were sympathetic.
But an embarrassing difficulty arose about Jimsy's bed attire which drove Stump for a time from his mind. It was solved by a night-shirt of first-citizen primness, which trailed upon the carpet and made him snigger self-consciously behind his hand until he heard Aunt Judith's step again beyond the door, when he vaulted into bed, shivering luxuriously in the chill softness of unaccustomed linen.... And then Aunt Judith blew out the lamp and tucked him in with hands so tremulous and gentle that his throat troubled him again, and he lay very still. Meeting her eyes, he suddenly buried his face in the pillow with a gulp and a sob, and clung to her hand. Aunt Judith, shaking, caught him wildly in her arms, cried very hard, and kissed him good-night. Jimsy, Stump and Aunt Judith Sawyer knew variously the meaning of starvation.
