His broken leg soon mended, but before it was quite healed Joanne carried him to the gymnasium where the girls gathered to make up the greens into wreaths and garlands. Here he distinguished himself by picking the red berries from the holly, by flying off with the string, by trying to hide the scissors or any other bright object he spied, and though at first this was amusing at last it came to be rather a nuisance, for it interfered with the work.
“I don’t believe we want him for a mascot,” decided Miss Chesney. “There’s no telling what trouble he’ll make for us.”
“But he’s so funny and so tame,” protested Winnie. “I love to see him hopping around.”
“Then he mustn’t come when he would interfere with any work we may want to do,” Miss Chesney compromised.
“Is your grandmother going to let you keep him for good?” inquired Winnie turning to Joanne.
Joanne shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid not. He carried off her thimble the other day and we were hours finding it.”
It was quite true that Mrs. Selden soon declared that she would have none of Jim Crow; he was far too mischievous to admit into the household, so back he went to his native heath where Pablo gladly took possession of him, clipped his wings and made a great pet of him, so the next time Joanne saw him he was riding around on Chico’s back and hob-nobbing with the cats in the barn and the chickens in the barn-yard.
Christmas came and went bringing all sorts of excitement and pleasures to Joanne. One of her chief joys was in a letter she received from Mrs. Marriott with a photograph of herself in her home, Bob standing by her side with the quizzical look upon his face which Joanne knew so well. Joanne paraded the picture around rapturously, and acknowledged it in a letter distinguished not only for its enthusiasm but for its length. It brought a prompt reply just after New Year, giving Joanne something to look forward to, for Mrs. Marriott said she expected to be in Washington before the year was up, and that she hoped to see much of her little friend while she was there.
“She is so perfectly adorable,” said Joanne after she had read the letter to Winnie. “I should like to carry her photograph around with me all the time, only it is too big. I am going to devote some of my Christmas money to having it framed, and I shall hang it in my room where I can see it first thing when I wake up.”
Winnie laughed. “You crazy thing, to go into such ecstasies over a mere woman.”