"You call it nothing? Well, you wait until you've worked half a lifetime, as Nancy and me have done, to get a place, and then see what you think about it. I guess Nancy 'll believe it's something."
Then he stopped as a clear call, "Breakfast! Breakfast!" came ringing out to them from the open door beyond the pump. "Perhaps we'd better not say anything about it until after breakfast. She's had a powerful uneasy night, and it's been a good bit of a ride over, too."
To this the boys assented, and the four walked across the yard to the kitchen door, where the little girl was shyly waiting for them.
"Ain't you the young chap that beat in the bicycle slow race?" asked
Nancy, when she caught a sight of Tilly's face as he removed his hat.
The other two boys laughed, and the farmer, looking squarely at his visitor, said:
"Well, I thought I'd seen you somewhere."
And then they settled down to breakfast in the happiest frame of mind, evidently, that could be imagined. But all the time Old Tilly kept one hand down at his side, a little out of sight, and the boys noticed that he took upon his plate only such things as he could very easily manage with one hand. The breakfast, for a hurried one, was very satisfactory indeed. Jot and Kent ate with full appreciation of it.
But had they watched closely, they would have seen how Old Tilly's face now flushed and then grew pale, and that occasionally he brought his lips together as though striving to control himself.
But, all unmindful of what the boy was undergoing, Nancy presided merrily over the table, and kept prompting Jim to fill up the plates as they needed it, and pressed this and that upon the boys' attention.
"I don't feel as if I should ever want to go away again," she cried. "It's so good to be at home. I've been through every room in the house and taken a view of them all." And then she said laughingly, turning to the boys, "Not that there are so very many of 'em, but they're all we've got, you know. After breakfast we're going out to the barn, ain't we, Polly?" she added.