What a wonderful thing is a baby! Babies were not new to either Bill
or Jap. In Bill's memory lingered the shrill duet of his twin
half-sisters, a continuous performance that had lasted more than a
year. And Jap had never fully corrected a lurch to the left side, due
to carrying his sister, Agnesia, when he was little more than a baby
himself. Yet the little visitor from the Land of Yesterday was a never
failing miracle to them. His cry filled them with fear for his
well-being, and his laugh intoxicated them with its glee.
"Wait till he can talk," smiled Flossy, "Then you will see how wise he
is."
In her heart she was beginning to combat the fear that he would never
talk. Other children of his age were already chattering like magpies.
"Ma said that I said 'papa' when I was eight months old," declared Jap.
"But I don't know why I should 'a' said that."
Bill grinned fatuously as the baby pulled at his hair.
"Bill won't get his hair cut," said Jap. "He knows that J. W. would
hang after me, if it wasn't for his curly hair."
The little fellow, who for obvious reasons could be neither Jasper nor
William, had learned to respond with amiable toleration to the soothing
abbreviation, "J. W." Kicking his stubby legs gleefully, he tangled
his fingers more mercilessly in Bill's brown locks. Flossy loosed the
fingers gently, as she cooed:
"Naughty, naughty! Mamma said baby mustn't."
Flinging his fingers aloft in protest, he gurgled: "Ja--Bi!"
Flossy's eyes shone with sudden joy. It was her son's first attempt at
articulate speech. The boys lunged forward with one impulse.
"He said 'Jappie,'" Jap cried, his chest swelling with the importance
of it. Bill glared.
"Why, Jap!" Pain and indignation were in his tone. "He tried to say
'Bill.'"
Flossy smiled on them both. It was a wonderful little kingdom, of
which she had assumed the place of absolute monarch, a monarch so
gentle and so just that her sway was never questioned.
"Ellis puts in half his time trying to teach baby to say the two names
all in one mouthful, so that you boys won't fight about his first
word," she vouchsafed. "It would have to be either Jap or Bill,
because you never tell him anything but your names."
When they waved their caps in farewell, they were still discussing the
mooted question vehemently. Was it "Jappie," or a combination of Jap
and Bill? To both of them the question was vital. Jap had the better
of the argument, when Bill blurted:
"Anyhow, he's my cousin, and he ain't no relation of yours." Then he
remembered that significant remark of Ellis's: "A little patch of the
old farm is quite good enough for Mr. and Mrs. Ellis Hinton and their
two sons, Jap and Jasper William," and he was silent the rest of the
way back to the office.
Little J. W. was three years old before he could speak distinctly. The
child was born with other afflictions than the serious impediment to
his speech, and the four who hung with anguished love on his every
gesture were never free from a certain unnamed anxiety. He loved Bill,
but he worshipped Jap. Both were his willing slaves.
One rainy, dismal night in early fall, when Bill's step-mother lay
seriously ill, Flossy left her baby to the care of the small but
usually capable maid who assisted her with the work of the cottage,
while she and Ellis went to the home of Judge Bowers to relieve the
trained nurse who had come up from the city. At the supper table,
Ellis had remarked that Jap and Bill would be working late that night,
in order to get out a job that had come in when all the resources of
the office were needed for the weekly edition of the _Herald_. He had
added that he would go over and help them, if his presence could be
spared from the sick-room.
The remark must have lodged in the baby's mind, for he slipped out of
bed, while the maid was employed in the kitchen, and toddled through
the cold rain almost all the way to Main street. Jim Blanke found him
lying exhausted in the road, a little way from the drug store, the rain
beating pitilessly on his unconscious head and his scantily clad body.
After a night of anxious care, the little fellow relapsed into a state
of coma, and lay for hours, white and still, save for the rasping of
his breath. The office was closed. Both boys, frantic with fear,
stood with Ellis as the child lay in his mother's arms, the four
dreading that each hoarse breath would be his last. Flossy sat erect
in the wide rocking chair, her brave eyes watching every sigh that tore
the little bosom. Dr. Hall, whose dictum was life and death, was
silent. And this silence was the last straw for Jap. He crept nearer.
In fear, he turned from the face of the beloved sufferer. Ellis caught
the look in the boy's anguished eyes, and a spasm crossed his tightly
compressed lips. The physician rallied himself from the torpor of
despair that had laid hold on him.
"Try to arouse him," he commanded. "Try again." The resources of his
experience and his prescription blank had long since been exhausted.
Flossy bent over her child and called softly:
"Baby, dearest, mamma loves you. Won't you speak?"
Ellis leaned forward. His face blanched. The rasping had ceased! Jap
caught the look of horror, and dragged himself up to look into the
baby's face.
"He isn't dead! He's all right!" he shrieked, not knowing that he
spoke. "He's still breathing. I can hear him." His hands grasped the
cold body and lifted it, unconscious of the thing he was doing.
"Oh, J. W.! Oh, J. W.!" he screamed, "don't go away from us!"
He pressed the child to his breast convulsively, and the miracle
happened. The solemn black eyes opened and a husky voice said,
"Jappie."
After the excitement was over, and the exhausted mother slept beside
her sleeping child. Bill said humbly:
"He did say 'Jap' first."
"But he tried to say 'Bill,' too," Jap said loyally.
The next morning, when the office had resumed its normal routine, a
routine that was destined to be only partially interrupted by the death
of Bill's second stepmother, a few days later, Ellis called Jap into
the little back room where, in the dismal days before Flossy's coming,
they had performed all the functions of housekeeping. He closed the
door, as he laid his hand on Jap's shoulders.
"You saved J. W.'s life," he said solemnly. "Doc Hall said that you
stopped him, on the threshold, when you gave that dreadful cry."
The baby did not rally, and Ellis worried about this incessantly. One
day, some weeks after another mound had been added to the group in
Judge Bowers's family lot, and Bill had gone with his father to
appraise the merits of a prospective housekeeper from Birdtown, Ellis
looked up from the proof he was correcting. Jap noted the anxiety in
his face, and the gray eyes, that could so often render speech
unnecessary, put the question. Ellis sighed.
"He's not getting along the way he ought to," he mused. "Doc Hall
prescribed a tonic for him a month ago; but it doesn't seem to take
hold. He has no constitution to begin with. His father, exhausted by
privation and ill-health, has handicapped him in the start.
"Jap," he said, as he arose and laid one arm confidingly around the
boy's shoulder, "you must remember that, in the years to come. I
didn't give the baby a fair chance. He may need all the help he can
get to carry him through. If you should live longer than I, you must
be his father and big brother, both."
Jap's gray eyes opened in astonishment. The idea that there could ever
be a time when Ellis would not be there had never entered his mind. He
looked into the dark, thin face with its pallor and its unnaturally
bright eyes, and a joyous smile took the place of the momentary shock.
"Doc Hall said that you had grit enough to outlive any disease that
ever lurked in the brush of Bloomtown," he declared eagerly.
"Doc Hall is an optimist," Ellis laughed hollowly. "I'm not so much
concerned for myself as for the boy and his mother. You know what J.
W. means to her."
"Bill and I have already talked it over," Jap returned. "We're going
to be big brothers to J. W. We're going to take turns at taking him
for long rides on Judge Bowers's old horse, Jeremiah. Doc Hall said
that long, jolty rides would set him up, rosy and fat, in a little
while. Bill told me this morning that he had J. W. weighed again, on
Hollins's scales, and he has gained three pounds."
Ellis Hinton's face cleared. There was a new elasticity in his step as
he crossed the room and laid the copy down on the case. Unconsciously
he began to whistle, as he clicked the type in the stick.