"Now, you're talking as you did when I first knew you," said Ruth disdainfully, "and not the way Aunt Hester likes you to talk. Don't let's go back to that dreadful time. Billy, do you suppose your relations will ever come after you?"
"Ain't got none."
"But I've a father, you know."
"Maybe you have and maybe you haven't. What's the matter with his being killed in an accident? You wouldn't care much, would you?"
"I don't know. It would be nice to have somebody your very own." Ruth spoke wistfully. "He wasn't bad. Mother said he'd come back; she knew he would. She said that the day before she went to heaven."
The child's lip trembled and she bent over to pick up a scarlet leaf in her pathway that she might hide her feelings.
"He won't come," declared Billy positively. "As for me I like it here all right and I'm goin' to stay and keep a store here myself when I grow up."
"Oh, good! And will you sell candy—that kind that's all pink and soft?"
"Sure," returned Billy. "We'll move back into the big house and have rice puddin' with raisins in every day, if we like."
"I'd rather have that lovely other kind of pudding like we had last Thanksgiving."