He had been with us nearly a month when finally, one evening, as he saw the other boys writing letters to their homes he decided he himself would write a letter to his married sister in Pennsylvania. When it was written and mailed, he half regretted what he had done.
Wasn’t he a wanderer—a young hobo if you like—and why should he think of home after all these years, even if the kindly sympathy to be found at the Colony did recall to him those better days?
But the letter was already on its way.... He wondered what his sister might think, how she might act.... She had always cared for him.
The bean soup which he was preparing for supper burned while he was deep in thought, and he blamed himself for his absent-mindedness.
“The boys will have to eat burnt soup just because I got to feeling sentimental,” he said to himself.
Then a word came that a nicely gowned young lady was coming up the driveway. There are many visitors at the Tea Room of the Colony House so it need have caused no excitement. But some one whispered “Look at Jim!”
He had glanced out at the approaching stranger, and he was pale and trembling. He said to me in a faint voice, “It’s my sister. Tell her I left this morning.... Tell her I got a position.”
And then the bell rang and he said: