“I’m coming in,” he said. “I want to tell you how it happened that I am bringing him home.”
“Oh, nothing has happened to Whitcomb—no accident, I mean. Go in; you’re chilled through.”
She had taken off Jimmy’s coat and cap, and the child, half awake, was nestled in her arms, when Jarvis followed her into the lighted room, with its table daintily set for three, and its cheer of burning logs, which Barbara had stirred to a blaze.
She looked at him in piteous silence as he stood, a tall, sombre figure at her fireside, looking down at her with eyes full of a brooding tenderness of which he was only half aware. He was anxiously searching for words which would hurt least; for a balm of comfort which, he knew, did not exist.
Jimmy, rubbing the sleep out of his brown eyes, sat up suddenly in Barbara’s lap.
“David didn’t let me stay wiv him,” he quavered. “He—he made me det out ’n’—’n’ he dave me some money; ’n’ a big boy pushed me over and took it away. I ran after David ’n’ called him loud; but he didn’t hear me. ’Nen I got lost.”
“I found him,” said Jarvis, “asleep on some straw in the comer of an empty stall.”
“The boy appears to need a general washing and putting to rights, I should say; but he isn’t hungry.”
“Where,” asked Barbara, in a stifled voice, “is David?”
“He’s gone wiv the pretty lady, I guess,” said Jimmy sleepily. “She had roses in her hat. Why don’t you have roses in your hat, Barbara? I like roses.”
The little boy suddenly opened his eyes very wide; his mouth followed suit.
“Look, Barb’ra,” he shrilled excitedly. “A man dave me a sausage in the middle of a biscuit, ’n’ I was awful hungry an’ I fordot—I mean I forgot—t’ bite wiv my side teef—’n’—’n’—’n’ one o’ my front teef came right out. I lost it on the ground.”
Barbara’s questioning eyes were on Jarvis’s face. He turned abruptly as if unable to bear them.
“I called loud to David; but he was drinkin’ somethin’ brown out of a tumbler ’n’ he didn’t turn around,” chattered Jimmy, “but the lady, she looked at me, ’n’ she said——”
“It feels funny in my mouf,” he complained. “Will my new toof come in right away? Will it, Barbara?”
“If you’ll put the boy to bed,” he said, “I’ll—wait.”
He sat down by the fire, a grim look of patient endurance on his face. In the room above he could hear the light tread of Barbara’s feet, and Jimmy’s high, childish treble upraised in excited speech.