To the Highest Bidder. Florence Morse Kingsley
with an unaccustomed light. He was thinking his own thoughts, and for once, at least, he found a singular pleasure in them.
“Don’t get excited,” he advised her coolly. “Sit down and we’ll talk this over. You want to keep the farm for that half-brother of yours, you say. Well, I’m disposed to give it to you to do as you like with, if you——”
She gazed at him almost incredulously.
“You’ll give me time to try?” she asked breathlessly. “Oh, thank you!”
He answered her impetuous question with another. “Did you notice the person who showed you in? Yes; I see you did, particularly. Well, she’s my housekeeper. She’s been here since my—since I buried the late Mrs. Jarvis. But I—well; I’m tired of seeing the woman about. I shall need somebody to take her place, and—Stop! I want you to hear me out.”
The girl had not resumed her seat at Jarvis’s bidding. She retreated swiftly toward the door. The man’s imperious voice followed her.
“Come back! I’m not done with what I had to say!”
But Barbara had already closed the door definitely behind her. The woman in black silk stood just outside. She had, in fact, been listening.
“Well!” she breathed explosively, staring at Barbara. Then she rustled toward the front door, her ample draperies filling the narrow twilight passage with a harsh, swishing sound.
“You better not show your face here again!” she said in a low, fierce voice, as she held the door wide for Barbara to pass out.
IV
Jimmy Preston sat curled up on one foot by the table in Peg Morrison’s loft. His yellow hair was damp and towsled, for he had run bare-headed through the rain, bearing his precious book of “Vallable Information” tucked under his blouse.
“I didn’t bring my red ink,” he explained breathlessly to Peg, “‘cause I was ’fraid I’d spill it. I fought I could borrow some of yours.”
“You can, an’ welcome, son,” agreed Peg, “but remember that’ll give me an option on yours. Them that borrows ought to be willin’ to lend. They ain’t though, as a gen’ral thing. Borrowers is spenders, and lenders is savers, as a rule.”
“I’ll lend you my whole bottle of red ink an’ I’ll lend you my pen, too,” said Jimmy magnificently.
The little boy spread his book open on the table for Mr. Morrison’s inspection. “You see I’ve begun it already,” he said with pride.
“Le’ me see; what you got here?” and Peg traced the first wavering line with a horny forefinger.
“That’s how not to lose a letter,” said Jimmy proudly. “Barb’ra says sometimes letters are ’portant, an’ you don’t want to lose ’em.”
“‘Lev letters in the posoffis. They wil be saf ther,’” read Peg slowly. He paused and screwed his mouth in a noiseless whistle.
“Don’t you think that’s a vallable inf’mation?” demanded Jimmy anxiously. “If I hadn’t taken that letter and put it in my pocket, I shouldn’t have lost it. Barb’ra could have got it herself, and maybe it was ’portant. You can’t tell ’thout you read a letter whether it’s ’portant or not; an’ you can’t read a letter when it’s lost.”
“So you lost a letter ’dressed to Barb’ry, did you? H’m! Where’d you lose it?”
“If I knew, I’d go an’ find it,” said Jimmy soberly. “I put it in my pocket, an’ it was blue, an’ it was f’om out west. Barb’ra doesn’t know who it was f’om. But she’d like to know.”
“H’m!” repeated Peg. “You’d ought to carried it all the way right in your han’, where you c’d see it. Pockets are kind o’ dangerous when it comes to letters. I know a whole row o’ little boys ’at ain’t alive at all, ’count o’ a letter bein’ lost. They never was born,” he added by way of explanation.
Jimmy drew a deep sigh of sustained interest.
“You see it was this way,” continued Peg circumstantially. “The’ was a young feller ’at I used to know, an’ he was workin’ in a lumber-camp one winter where the’ wasn’t any pos’offis; one o’ the men used to carry the letters in an’ out, a matter o’ fifteen miles. One time he lost a letter this young feller wrote to his girl, an’ didn’t think to say nothin’ ’bout it; an’ she got all worked up ’cause she didn’t hear f’om him, an’ after a spell she up an’ married another man; an’ so the young man I was speakin’ of never got married, an’ never had any little boys o’ his own. He felt awful bad ’bout it fer a long time, but he ain’t never los’ a letter ’at b’longed to anybody else.”
The pattering sound of the rain on the barn roof increased to a steady roar as Peg related this short but instructive tale.
“I sh’d think those little boys would feel bad,” said Jimmy sympathetically. “I’d hate not to be alive.”
“Mebbe they do; an’ ag’in, mebbe they don’t,” observed Peg cautiously. “Anyhow, some of ’em would be growed up by this time; farmin’ it, mebbe, or keepin’ store.” His eyes wore a far-away look.
Jimmy dipped Peg’s pen in the red ink bottle.
“How do you spell not, Peg?” he inquired.
“K-n-o-t,” replied the old man, with a sigh.
Jimmy was silent for a long minute, his pen travelling slowly along the blue line and leaving a trail of wabbly red letters behind.
“‘Hough knot to los a letter,’” he read aloud, with honest pride in his achievement. “What’ll I say next, Peg?”
“Keep yer mind an’ yer eyes onto it till you get it t’ the person it’s meant for,” the old man said, with some sternness. “You’ve got to do that with ev’rythin’ you do,” he went on. “You can’t go moseyin’ ’long thinkin’ ’bout ev’rythin’ under the sun ’cept what you’re doin’. If you’re ploughin’, plough, an’ put all the grit an’ gumption you’ve got onto ploughin’. Most folks ain’t so smart ’at they c’n afford to run a d’partment store in their minds. Hold on! Don’t try to write all that. Jus’ say, pay attention to that letter. You know, Cap’n,” he went on impressively, “you come of awful fine stock. The Prestons was always smart; your great-gran’father, he was smarter ’an all possess, an’ your gran’father, he was jes’ the same.”
“An’ my father was, too,” interrupted Jimmy, eying the old man with a pucker between his brown eyes. “Wasn’t he smarter’n all possess, Peg?”
“‘Course he was, Cap’n,” agreed the old man hastily. “Up to the time he was took sick, he was A number one. An’ Barb’ry—I mean Miss Barb’ry, she’s awful smart an’ ambitious, too, fer a female. Oh, you’ll get along in the world, Cap’n, ’course you’ll get along! But losin’ letters is like losin’ other things, such as money an’—an’ health, an’ reputation an’—farms. It all comes o’ lettin’ yer mind kind o’ wander. You won’t do that, will you, Cap’n?”
The man’s voice trembled; he seemed anxiously intent on the little boy’s answer.
“I won’t, if I can help it, Peg,” Jimmy answered honestly. “But,” he added candidly, “I like to think ’bout things in school—all kind o’ things. When I look out the windows an’ see the trees wavin’ an’ hear the birds I like t’ p’tend I’m outdoors playin’.”
“Don’t you do it, Cap’n,” Peg spoke almost solemnly. “You