"_Afraid!_" Miss Laura caught herself up quickly.
"Yes'm," said Jim in a still smaller voice, his eyes hidden now.
"O--then I'll leave the light, of course." But there was just a shade of
disappointment in Miss Laura's voice and Jim caught it. "Good-night,
dear," she added, with a light touch on the straight brown hair.
"G'night," came in a muffled voice from the pillow.
Laura turned away, but before she reached the stairs the boy called her.
She went back at once.
"What is it, Jim? Do you want anything?"
"Yes'm, the light. I guess--you better put it out."
"Not if you are afraid in the dark, Jim."
"Yes, Miss Laura, that's why."
"But I don't understand. Can't you tell me?" she urged gently.
Jim gulped down a troublesome something in his throat before he said in
a whisper, "Put your head down close, Miss Laura."
She turned out the light and as she dropped down beside the bed, a small
arm slipped around her neck and a husky little voice whispered in her
ear, "It's 'cause I'm 'fraid inside that I mustn't have the light left."
Another gulp. "Mother--she said you wasn't a coward just 'cause you was
'fraid inside, but only when you let the 'fraid get out into the things
you _do_. She said lots of brave men were 'fraid inside sometimes.
An'--an' she said I mustn't ever be a coward nor tell lies, an' I
promised--cross my heart--I wouldn't. So that's why, Miss Laura."
Again Laura longed to hug the little fellow and kiss him as his mother
would have done, but she said only,
"Yes, Jim, I quite understand now, and I know you will never be a
coward. Here's the bell, you know. You can press the button if you want
anything, and the maid sleeps in the next room. She'll be up in a few
minutes."
"Yes'm." A little drowsiness was creeping into Jim's voice already.
"Good-night, dear."
"Good-night," Jim murmured and Laura went away, but she left the door
open into the lighted hall, and when she slipped back a little later the
boy was asleep.
When the other Camp Fire Girls learned about "Miss Laura's boy" they
were all interested in him, and begged that he might come to the next
Council meeting. Jim was sitting up most of the day now, and his
wheelchair was rolled into the room after all the girls had come. He was
dressed and sat up very straight, but though he was much better, his
face was still very thin and white.
"All but one of my girls are here to-night, Jim," Miss Laura told him.
"I'm going to introduce you to them and see how many of the names you
can remember."
"Why isn't that other one here?" he demanded.
"She couldn't come this time," Laura said with a glance at Olga, sitting
grave and silent a little apart from the others.
The girls gathered about the wheelchair and Jim held out his hand to
each one as Laura mentioned her name. His gray eyes searched each face,
but he said nothing until Lena Barton flung him a careless nod and would
have passed on, but he caught her hand and laughed up into the freckled
face with the bunch of red frizzes puffed out on each side in the
"latest moment" fashion.
"Hello, Carrots," he called in the tone of jovial good-fellowship, "I
like you, 'cause you look like a fellow I used to sit with in school.
His name was Barton too--Jo Barton. O, I say," leaning forward eagerly,
"mebbe he's your brother?"
"You're right, kiddie--he's one of the bunch," Lena answered, her face
softening as she looked down into the eager gray eyes.
"Gee! Jo's sister!" Jim repeated. "I wish Jo was here too. I s'pose," he
glanced at Miss Laura, "you couldn't squeeze in just one more boy?"
Laura shook her head. "Not into these meetings. But you can invite
Lena's brother to come and see you, if you like."
"O bully!" Jim cried out and turned again to Lena. "You tell him, won't
you?"
"I will, sure," she promised, and Jim reluctantly released her hand.
The girls begged that he might stay, and though Jim's tongue was silent
his eyes pleaded too, so Miss Laura conceded, "Just for a while then, if
you'll be very quiet so as not to get too tired," and with a contented
smile Jim leaned back against his cushions and looked and listened. When
the girls chanted the Fire Ode his eyes widened with pleasure and he
listened with keen interest to the recital of "gentle deeds." Even Olga
gave one this time. Jim's eyes studied her grave face, his own almost as
grave, and when later she passed his chair, he caught her dress and said
very low, "Put down your head. I want to ask you something."
Olga impatiently jerked her dress from his grasp, but something in his
eyes held her against her will, and under cover of a burst of laughter
from another group, she leaned over the wheelchair and ungraciously
enough asked what he wanted. Jim's eyes, very earnest and serious now,
were looking straight into hers.
"I know what makes you keep away from the others and look
so--so--dif'rent. You're lonesome like I was at the hospital. Is it your
mother, too?"
Olga's face went dead white and for an instant her eyes flamed so
fiercely that the boy shrank away with a little gasp of fear. But the
next moment she was looking at him with eyes full of tears--a long
silent look--then, without a word, she was gone.
The first time that Jim came downstairs to dinner he was very shy and
spoke only in answer to a question. But his awe of Judge Haven and the
servants soon wore off, and his questions and comments began to interest
the judge. When one evening after dinner Laura was called to the
telephone, the judge laid aside his paper and called the boy to him. Jim
promptly limped across the room and stood at the judge's knee, his gray
eyes looking steadily into the keen blue ones above him.
"Are you having a good time here?" the judge began.
"O, splendid!"
"And you are almost well, aren't you?"
"Almost well," Jim assented, a little shadow of anxiety creeping into
the gray eyes.
"Let me see--how many days have you been here?"
Jim answered instantly, "Nine. I've got five more," this last very
soberly.
"Five more?" the judge questioned.
Jim nodded gravely. "Miss Laura said I could stay here two weeks, you
know."
"Oh! And then what--back to the hospital?"
"O no!" Jim was very positive about that. "No, I don't know where I'll
be after the five days. I--I kind o' wish I did. It would be--settleder,
you know. But," his face brightening, "but of course, it will be a nice
place, because Miss Laura said she'd find me a good home somewhere, and
she don't ever forget her promises. And besides, I'm going to be her boy
just the same when I go away from here--she promised that too."
The judge nodded, his eyes studying the small earnest face.
"Miss Laura must find that good home right away," he said. "Of course
you want to know where you are going."
"I hope she'll be the kind that likes boys," Jim said after a thoughtful
pause. "Do you think she will?"
"Who?"
"The woman in that good home. They don't all, you know. Some of 'em
think boys are dreadful noisy and bothering, and some think they eat too
much. I eat a lot sometimes----" he ended with an anxious frown.
The judge found it necessary just then to put his hand over his eyes. He
muttered something about the light hurting them, and then Laura came in
and told Jim it was bedtime. He said good-night, holding out his small
stubby hand. The judge's big one grasped it and held it a moment.
"We had a nice talk, didn't we?" Jim said, and with the smile that made
his homely little face radiant for a moment, he added, "It sure is nice
to talk with a _man_," and he went off wondering what the judge was
laughing about.
He was not laughing when Laura came downstairs again after tucking up
the boy in bed. She so hated to turn out the light and leave him in the
dark, but she always did it. Now she told her father what Jim had said
about that the first night.
The judge made no comment, but after a moment he remarked, "The boy is
rather worried about the home you are to find for him. It ought to be
settled. Have you any place in view?"
"No. To tell the truth, father, I can't bear to have him go away. Would
you mind if I keep him here a while longer? You are so much away, and he
is company for me, and very little trouble. I shall miss him dreadfully
when he goes."
"Of course I don't mind," her father said. "Only, Laura, is it fair to
keep him here--fair to him, I mean? The longer he stays the harder it
will be for him to go to a strange place."
"I suppose you are right," Laura admitted with a sigh, "and I must find
the home for him at once."
"But be sure it is a good place, and with a woman who will 'mother'
him," the judge added. "Poor little chap--only nine and lame, and alone
in the world. It's hard lines."
"It would seem so," his daughter admitted, "and yet, Jim is such a brave
honest little fellow, and he has such a gift for making friends, that
perhaps he is not so badly handicapped, after all. I shall miss him
dreadfully when he leaves us."
X