Jerry settled himself to write the letter. But he found himself hard to please, and tore up several drafts. Writing apologies was not such easy work, after all! Then Tim put his grizzled head in at the door, with a beaming smile.
"Look here, boy, I've got an idee! The picture business is dull this morning. Go up and get yours took. You can send it along for a Christmas gift. Sha'n't cost you a cent, either. I get all my work done gratis, for sending him so much trade."
Three days after, Jerry dropped into the post-office a little package addressed to his uncle, containing, besides a letter, an excellent likeness of himself. Jerry made in the letter a straightforward acknowledgment of his mistake, and accompanied this manly apology with an earnest request to be allowed to return home.
He had grown so homesick for a sight of the old place that he could scarcely see the lines on his paper. And Aunt Lucy—well, he almost broke down at the thought of all her motherly kindness to him.
"Now I'll surely get an answer by Wednesday," he thought, but Wednesday went by, and another week passed, and although he called regularly at the post-office, no word came.
"Well, I've done all I could," he said. "It's plain they don't want me back."
Tim's sympathetic old heart ached for the boy's distress. He even offered to go up to the farm and intercede in his behalf.
"No indeed!" Jerry answered, defiantly. "I'll never beg my way back. I'm not the kind to go where I'm not wanted."
"Maybe they never got your letter."