The recommendation by my two friends was sufficiently strong to nearly cause me to refuse admission to young Jim. But his manner pleased me and our reception committee—made up of members of the Family—assured me that we had no need to fear poor Jim. Anyway he who has nothing can safely make friends with whomever he chooses.
Jim told us that years ago he had been a “cookie”—please note the “ie”—in a lumber camp in an Eastern State. So when a vacancy occurred in the culinary department of our home Jim was selected for the place.
He proved an excellent assistant and worked for the house—as the phrase goes—he made the coffee so weak, he made the potato soup go so far, that I, economical from habit and from necessity, would blush whenever one of the boys said that he enjoyed the good dinner.
I need have had no fear for it was Jim’s smile that made us all content with the simple fare.
“A grand cook,” the boys would say.
“A grand cook,” Echo and I would answer.
Jim had roughed it for several years and knew a little of the ways of the road. He had worked when a boy in his father’s factory and as some of the workmen felt they were not being paid properly—the son joined in with the workmen and went out on a strike against his father.
In the excitement of the strike the father had spoken to the son about his joining in with the strikers. It seemed to the father like disloyalty—ingratitude. But as for the son, he couldn’t analyze his own psychological state of mind sufficiently to explain why his sympathy had been with the strikers, but feeling himself no longer welcome at the old home, he started to roam.
Seven years had passed since he had written to the old folks. Once or twice he had heard indirectly of his father’s search for him, but he could not even bring himself to write, much less to return.