The house grew very still. Jimsy, awaking after a time with the start of unfamiliar surroundings, heard the rattle of wind and snow against his window. A tree brushed monotonously against the panes—then through the sounds of winter storm came an unmistakable whimper and a howl. The boy sat up. Stump! Huddled likely against the door in an agony of faith. Jimsy thought of a winter night before Mom Dorgan had taken him in, and shivered. The howl came again. Rising, Jimsy opened his door on a crack and peered cautiously through it. The hallway was dimly alight from a lamp, set, for safety's sake, within a pewter bowl. The house of Sawyer slept. Gathering his train in his hand, Jimsy hurried through the hall and down the stairs to the lower floor, quite dark now, save for barred patches of window framing ghostly landscapes. A gust of wind and snow whirled in as he unbarred the kitchen door. Then something with an ingratiating waggle pushed gladly against his feet. Five seconds later Jimsy and Stump were on their way upstairs.
Excitement exacted its toll. Jimsy halted at the second turn in the upper hall, his scalp feeling very queer. The lamp had gone out, probably in the draft from the kitchen door, and he had lost his room! Whispering desperate admonitions to the wriggling dog beneath his arm, Jimsy went on tiptoed hunt until, finding a window, a turn and a door that seemed familiar, he heaved a great sigh of relief and turned the knob. As he pushed back the door, a flood of light and warmth fanned out, and Jimsy, tangling his feet in his train as only a small boy could, fell headlong into the room, propelling Stump, who yelped with fright, at the very feet of Abner Sawyer.
"Oh, my Gosh!" yelled Jimsy wildly. "Pinched!"
Outraged, the first citizen rose from a bench beside a table and a lamp, and Jimsy, scrambling to his feet, a ridiculous figure of apology and dismay in his billowing train and sagging shoulders, saw that Mr. Sawyer held in his hand a plane and a piece of wood and that the room in which he stood was a work-shop perfect in equipment.
"What," demanded Mr. Sawyer in a terrible voice, "what does this mean? That dog—"
But Jimsy had not heard.
"Lordy," he breathed, "what a thump-walloper of a shop! Whisht Jack Sweeny could see this. My, wouldn't his good eye open! Whatcha makin'?"
Mr. Sawyer reddened as any man may whose weakness has been unexpectedly detected by a boy in an acre of night-shirt.
"No one," he began icily, "no one—not even Mrs. Sawyer presumes to come beyond that threshold"—he broke off and frowned impatiently, feeling his power of aloofness threatened by something in Jimsy's eager stare which claimed a kinship of interest.... There was an alarming suggestion of intimacy anyway in a midnight scene with a tailless dog, a boy clad in your own night-shirt—and an inferential person with an eye by the name of Sweeny.... Why did a ridiculous frozen sense of guilt impede his tongue now when rebuke was imperative?... Why on earth had a look of relief and understanding supplanted the puzzled friendliness of Jimsy's supper-time stare?... So might a dog look who had waggled in friendly perplexity at the foot of a flawless statue only to find that the statue held in its hand a lowly but perfectly comprehensible bone ... and the dog's attitude of course toward the flawless statue would never be quite the same—nor—
"James," said the first citizen hoarsely, "go to bed!"
"Aw," said James softly, "make it Jimsy. Aunt Judith did. I ain't no stiff wit' spinach an' buttons chasin' newsies off the porch."
"Jimsy!" said the first citizen faintly, and felt his world rock about him again. For fate and Jimsy, it was very plain, had filed the word away with the biscuit.
Jimsy's grin was radiant. Upset, Mr. Sawyer turned back to his bench with Jimsy at his heels.
"Oh, Lordy, Lordy," breathed the boy in an ecstasy of admiration. "Makin' a Christmas present fur Aunt Judith on the sly, ain't ye? Won't she jus' open her eyes! I bet! And polishin' the wood yerself. Gee!"
Mr. Sawyer cleared his throat.
"Mrs. Sawyer and I," said he, "do—not—exchange—gifts—at Christmas. This cabinet is for my private office at the bank."
Jimsy's face fell.
"Aw," he said gently, "seems like ye'd orta give her sumthin' fur Christmas. She's so awful good.... B'long to the union?"
"I—I beg your pardon?"
"Carpenters' union. Jack Sweeny does."
The first citizen froze.
"Carpentering with me," he explained stiffly, "is a fad—not an occupation or a necessity. I," he added "am President of the Lindon Bank."
Jimsy's glance was sympathetic. It regretted the world's gain of a bank president at the expense of a better carpenter.
"I kin plane," he pleaded eagerly. "Honest Injun, I kin. I kin whittle too, like ol' Scratch. Lemme plane this—"
"I thank you," began Mr. Sawyer coldly, with unfortunate selection of words, "but—" His voice faltered under Jimsy's shining gaze. For, reading in the formal repudiation a vote of thanks, Jimsy had seized a plane and set to work.
The shavings flew. The clock ticked loudly in the quiet. Outside a winter blizzard was sweeping in white fury from the hills. Stump crouched silently in a corner, his head upon his paws. And Abner Sawyer, returning to his work in helpless indecision, felt his privacy and his dignity forever compromised by a boy and a dog. He knew of course that a small boy, scantily clad, should not be planing furiously on the bench beside him at midnight with a sociable gleam in his eye—yet—something—a terrible conviction perhaps that if he spoke at all his voice would be hoarse and uncertain and his poise threatened by the paralyzing sense of apology which welled strangely up within him in Jimsy's presence, tied his tongue. The minutes ticked loudly on and the shavings flew.... And Jimsy would misinterpret whatever he said in terms of sentimentality. He always did.... The clock struck one.... Abner Sawyer rose.
"James—Jimsy," he said, and his voice was hoarse and uncertain as he knew it would be, "you must go to bed."
Jimsy looked up sympathetically.
"Got a cold?"
"No."
"Frog in your throat?"
"No."
Jimsy resigned his plane with a sigh.
"Golly," he laughed, "we'd catch it, wouldn't we—me and you—if Aunt Judith knew!"
Then he glanced at Stump and said nothing at all. And quite suddenly conscience told Abner Sawyer that he could not accept without giving. Jimsy had helped him willingly and he had accepted—why he could not for the life of him remember, save that it had something to do with his throat and his poise. It did entail obligation of a sort, however, and he was a just man. Abner Sawyer did not look at Stump. He blew out the light.
In silence the two passed out and closed the door. The episodic irregularities of the evening beginning with the Lindon Evening News had reached unheard of climax. A mongrel dog was asleep in the warmth of the sanctum.
Abner Sawyer had a strangling sense of another link to his biscuit-riven chain and passed his hand over his forehead in a dazed and weary way.
"Abner," said Aunt Judith nervously at breakfast, "you—you don't think this once we—could have—a—a Christmas tree for Jimsy?"
"Certainly not!" said Mr. Sawyer coldly.
Aunt Judith's hand trembled a little as she poured the coffee and the first citizen waited so long for her usual reply that he thought impatiently it would never come. It came at last—quietly.
"Just as you—say, Abner." But the final word was lost in an outraged yell from somewhere near the woodpile.
"It—it must be Jimsy," said Aunt Judith hurriedly. "He—he was up so early I gave him his breakfast. He's shoveling the snow from the walks—"
"Gwan!" came a muffled roar. "Say that again and I'll bust yer face good." Sounds of battle and vilifying repartee speedily upset the Sawyer breakfast. Abner Sawyer pushed back his chair and strode hastily to the kitchen window. He saw concentric circles of fists and snow and a yapping dog. He could not know that the defensive section of the maelstrom was Specks, the Christmas urchin next door, or that Jimsy and Specks settled every controversy under Heaven in a fashion of their own.
The first citizen flung up the window.
"James!" he said in a terrible voice.
The concentric circles wavered—then whirled dizzily on.
"James!" Too much conventional horror and dignity there to pierce the elemental.
"Jimsy!" There was sharp informality now that meant business. Jimsy upset his freckled antagonist in the snow and wheeled.
"Mister Sawyer," he yelled indignantly, "he went an' said ye was an ol' crab—an' a miser—an' a skinflint—an'—an' a stiff—an' I blacked his eye fur him an' tol' him he lied. An' he went an' said ye didn't have no heart or ye wouldn't let Aunt Judith carry in the wood an' do all the work an' never git no new clothes—"
"Yi! Yi! Yi! Yi!" derided Specks. "Boney Middleton tol' me—Boney Middleton tol' me. You won't have no tree or nuthin'."
"Didn't I tell ye 'bout the biscuit?" demanded Jimsy fiercely. "An' about Stump sleepin' in the work-shop, didn't I? Hain't that enuff? Hain't he good to boys an' dogs? I—I don't want no Christmas tree, ye big stiff. I'm goin' to have turkey—"
But Abner Sawyer had closed the window with a bang. Although he did not look at Aunt Judith he knew that her face was white.
