"Yes, Jim."
"Well, I bin thinking it over. If I ain't better in the morning I guess—" the words came reluctantly—"I guess you'd better go see the Christmas lady. I wouldn't mind her knowin' so much. 'T won't be fer long, nohow, cause I kin take keer of you all soon—soon 's I kin git up."
The talking brought on severe coughing, and he sank back exhausted.
"Can't you go to sleep, honey?" asked his mother.
"No, it's them ole wheels," he said fretfully, "them wheels at the fact'ry; when I git to sleep they keep on wakin' me up."
Mrs. Wiggs's hands were rough and knotted, but love taught them to be gentle as she smoothed his hot head.
"Want me to tell you 'bout the country, Jim?" she asked.
Since he was a little boy he had loved to hear of their old home in the valley. His dim recollection of it all formed his one conception of heaven.
"Yes, ma; mebbe it will make me fergit the wheels," he said.
"Well," she began, putting her head beside his on the pillow, so he could not watch her face, "it was all jes' like a big front yard without no fences, an' the flowers didn't belong to folks like they do over on the avenue, where you dassent pick a one; but they was God's, an' you was welcome to all you could pull. An' there was trees, Jim, where you could climb up an' git big red apples, an' when the frost 'ud come they'd be persimmons that 'ud jes' melt in yer mouth. An' you could look 'way off 'crost the meaders, an' see the trees a-wavin' in the sunshine, an' up over yer head the birds 'ud be singin' like they was never goin' to stop. An' yer pa an' me 'ud take you out at the harvestin' time, an' you 'ud play on the hay-stacks. I kin remember jes' how you looked, Jim—a fat little boy, with red cheeks a-laughin' all the time."