“They’ve gone away!” she said thickly. It takes time for throbbing throats to come back to their own. “It’s too late to find out. If I’d gone yesterday—” She stopped hastily, on the verge of fresh tears.
“Go ahead, little un; weather’s a little too thick yet to see clear. Who’s gone away? What’s it too late for?” But even as he said it, Uncle Jem, too, understood. He went on without waiting, to give Judith more time.
“Hold on!—I can pull out o’ the fog myself. That mother o’ that little cured un—she’s the one that’s gone away, eh? You was too late to see her an’ ask your questions. I see. Well, now, I call that too bad. But ’tain’t worth another cry, deary.”
“Well, I won’t cry another one, so there!” cried Judith. “Only—only—”
“I know—I know! We’ve got to slew off on another tack. You give Uncle Jem time to think, Judy. There’s a powerful lot o’ thinkin’-time handy when you lay here on your back for a livin’. Jest you run home an’ let your ma put you to bed. I’ve heard all about your goin’s-on, an’ I guess bed’s the best place for you! I’ll think it out while you’re restin’ up.”
But to unlettered people who rarely get in touch with what is going on in the thick of things, “thinking it out” is no easy matter. Their one frail little hold on the miracle that could make Blossom whole had snapped when the hotel mother and child went away. Where to turn next for information—what to do next—was a puzzle that would not unravel for any of them. In vain Uncle Jem wrestled with it, as he lay through long, patient hours. And Judith wrestled untiringly.
The mackerel-money came in due time, but the wondrous little blue check that came out of the official-looking envelope and lay outspread on Judith’s hard, brown palm had lost its power to give legs to little Blossom, and Judith gazed at it resentfully. What was the use of it now? A small part of it would get the little wheel-chair, but it was not a wheel-chair Judith longed for now. She put away the blue check safely, and took up the wrestling again. She would find the clue to the puzzle—she refused to give it up.
Then quite privately and uninvited, Jemmy Three began to think. No one had thought of asking his advice; thinking had never been Jemmy Three’s stronghold.
He went into his grandfather’s room one early morning arrayed in his best clothes. Not much in the way of a “best,” but Jemmy had “pieced out” as well as possible with scraps of his dead father’s best that had been packed away. He looked unduly big and plain and awkward in the unaccustomed finery, but the freckles across the deep brown background of his face spelled d-e-t-e-r-m-i-n-a-t-i-o-n. Uncle Jem spelled it out slowly. His astonished gaze wandered downward, then, from “best” to “best.”
“Well?” he interrogated, and waited.