To the Highest Bidder. Florence Morse Kingsley
me, sir,” she said.
Jimmy considered this proposition for awhile in silence. “You don’t kiss Peg,” he objected at last.
“Mercy no! I should hope not!” laughed Barbara.
She seized the child firmly and planted four of the seven kisses on his hard pink cheeks. “Now two more under your curls in the sweet place,” she murmured. “And the last one in the sweetest place of all!” And she turned up his round chin and sought the warm white hollow beneath like a homing bee.
“I guess I’ll be some sweeter after I eat six popcorn balls,” observed Jimmy, disengaging himself. “The molasses didn’t spill much.”
“Well, I’m glad of that!” cried Barbara. “I guess I’d better get to work. You run out and bring in some chips from the woodpile, and I’ll have that molasses boiling before you can spell Jack Robinson.”
“J-a-c-k,” began Jimmy triumphantly; but Barbara chased him out of doors with a sudden access of pretended severity.
“You’re getting altogether too clever for me, Jimmy Preston!” she said. Then her face clouded swiftly at the recollection of Stephen Jarvis’s parting words.
“What do you propose to do with the boy?” he had asked.
“Take care of him,” she had replied defiantly, “and save the farm for him.”
It was then that Jarvis had risen, crushing his gray felt hat angrily between his hands.
“You’re likely to find it impossible to do either the one or the other,” he said coldly. “The boy is a chip of the old block. As for the farm, I’ve been trying to make you understand for the last half hour that it does not belong to you, unless you can meet the payments before the date I set; and you’ve just told me you can’t do that.”
“Let me pop the corn, Barb’ra!” begged Jimmy, sniffing ecstatically at the molasses which was beginning to seethe and bubble fragrantly in the little round kettle. “I like birfdays,” he went on sociably; “don’t; you, Barb’ra? I mean I like birthdays. Did I say that right, Barb’ra?”
“Yes, dear,” said his sister absent-mindedly. She was drawing out the little round mahogany table. “I’m going to put on the pink china,” she announced, with a defiant toss of her dark head. The defiance was for the Honorable Stephen Jarvis.
“It’s beginning to pop!” cried Jimmy excitedly, as he drew the corn-popper back and forth on the hot griddles with a busy scratching sound.
“Don’t let it burn,” warned Barbara. “How would you like some little hot biscuits, Jimmy, and some strawberry preserves?”
“Strawberry ’serves?” he echoed. “I didn’t know we had any ’serves.”
“Well, we have. I’ve been saving ’em for—for your birthday, Jimmy.”
“Oh, I’m glad!” cried the little boy, redoubling his efforts. “See me work, Barb’ra. Don’t I work hard?”
“Yes, indeed, dear.” She hesitated, then added in a low voice, “You always will work hard; won’t you, Jimmy?”
The child watched her gravely while she shook the crisp white kernels into a bowl. He was thinking of her question.
“Do you think I’ll have to go to school much longer, Barb’ra?” he asked. “It takes such a long time to go to school.”
The girl wheeled sharply about.
“What put that notion into your head?” she demanded. “Of course you’ve got to go school till—till you’re educated—like father.” Her voice faltered a little, and a dark flush crept into her cheeks.
The boy’s eyes were on her face.
“Of course father was—he was sick, Jimmy, sick and unhappy. You don’t remember him as I do; but he——”
“Yes, I know,” the child said simply.
Then he threw his arms about Barbara and hugged her. He didn’t know why exactly, except that Barbara liked his rough boyish caresses. And he wanted to make her smile again.
She did smile, winking back the tears.
“I want you to study—hard, Jimmy,” she went on in a low tremulous voice; “and grow to be a good man—the best kind of a man. You must! I couldn’t bear it, if you——”
“Well, I won’t, Barb’ra,” promised the child gravely. He eyed his sister with a sudden flash of comprehension as he added stoutly, “You don’t have to worry ’bout me. I’m growin’ jus’ ’s fas’ ’s I can, an’ I know mos’ all my tables, ’ceptin’ seven an’ nine an’ some of eight.”
Barbara laughed, and there was the same odd ring of defiance in the sound. Then she opened a cupboard in the wall and took out a cake covered with pink icing.
Jimmy’s blue eyes grew wide with wonder. “What’s that?” he demanded.
Barbara was setting six small candles around the edge; last of all she planted one in the middle.
“You couldn’t guess if you tried,” she said gaily. “I just know you couldn’t. You’re such a dull boy.”
“I can guess, too!” cried Jimmy with a shout of rapture. “It’s a cake! It’s my birfday cake! An’ it’s got six candles on it an’ one to grow on. I ’member last year it had only five an’ one to grow on; but I growed that one all up. I want Peg to see it. Can I go out t’ the barn an’ get him? Can I, Barb’ra?”
The girl hesitated as she cast a troubled eye on the table set daintily with the pink china, and the few carefully cherished bits of old silver.
“You may ask Peg to come in and have supper with you, if you like,” she said slowly. “Just this once—because it’s your birthday.”
Jimmy didn’t wait for a second bidding; he dashed out of the back door with a boyish whoop, carefully studied from the big boys in school.
Peg (shortened from Peleg) Morrison had worked on the Preston farm for so many years that he appeared almost as much a part of the place as the shabby old house itself, or the rambling structures at its rear known indeterminately as “the barns.” He slept over the carriage-house, in quarters originally intended for the coachman. Here also he cooked handily for himself on a rusty old stove, compounding what he called “tried an’ tested receipts” out of a queer old yellow-leaved book bound in marbled boards, its pages written over in Peg’s own scrawling chirography.
“I wouldn’t part with that thar book for its weight in gold an’ di’mon’s,” he was in the habit of saying solemnly to Jimmy. “No, Cap’n, I reelly wouldn’t. I begun to write down useful inf’mation in it when I wasn’t much bigger’n you be now, an’ I’ve kep’ it up.”
“Vallable Information, by Peleg Morrison,” was the legend inscribed on its thumbed cover. Jimmy admired this book beyond words, and quite in private had started one of his own on pieces of brown paper accumulated in the attic chamber where he played on rainy days.
“Hello, Cap’n!” observed Peg with a genial smile, as the little boy thrust his yellow head in at the door of his quarters. “Say! I do b’lieve you’ve growed some since I seen you last. It must be them popcorn balls, I reckon. Pop-corn’s mighty tasty and nourishin’.”
“I haven’t eaten ’em—not yet!” said Jimmy breathlessly. “An’, Peg, I’ve got a birfday cake—an’ it’s got six candles on it, an’ one to grow on; an’—an’ it’s all pink on top; an’ Barb’ra, she’s made a whole lot of biscuits; an’ we’ve got some strawberry ’serves, an’—an’ we want you to come to supper; jus’ this once, ’cause it’s my birfday. Barb’ra said to tell you. An’ she’s