“You don’t need to come,” he said. “I reckon I can stand a little tooth-tinkering. You get on to Mr. Summers. And—and, Sam—”
“Yes?”
“If you don’t want to stay up there to the house alone, you come down to our place. My ma, she’d love to have you. Sam—”
“Yes.”
“We know what trouble is, ma and me, see? Don’t nobody around these parts know better than we do. Mr. Carson, he set us on our feet, and now we can hold up our heads and look people in the face. My, but it feels good! But we know what trouble is—all kinds, pretty near. You come to us.”
Sam held out a tense hand.
“Put it there, Hi.”
Hi “put it there” and turned valorously up the dentist’s terrible stairs.
As for Sam, he kept vigorously on his way. He thought of those automobiles he had seen the day before, and he felt as if he were all cranked up, with a good spark on, and was ready for a long hard run. So he turned up Burchard Avenue, and in at the gate of the little Methodist parsonage.
The first person he saw was Mrs. Summers, who had just got baby Jonathan asleep and was setting him out of doors in his carriage, to grow. She held up a small brown finger to warn Sam that conversation was not to be permitted in the vicinity of the sleeping prince, and led the way into the living room. Then she went in search of her husband, who, it appeared, was shut up in the cell-like room he called his study. He came striding out of his retreat and grasped Sam by the hand.