The tap of Mr. Jolly’s hammer reached her ears soon after she came in sight of the flowery shop, but Lydia was intent upon a little figure seated upon the step of the coach. It was that of a small boy, perhaps four years old, whose hair was as black as Lydia’s was golden, whose face was streaked with the mark of tears and dirt, and who held in his hand a slice of bread and butter.
“I wonder if it’s Mr. Jolly’s little boy?” thought Lydia.
But when Mr. Jolly looked up from his hammering, he gave a bird-like nod at Lydia, and then one at the little boy.
“Look what I found in my shop this morning,” said he.
The little boy’s brown eyes filled with tears, and he put his slice of bread and butter on the grass beside him.
“I won’t go back,” said he, his lip quivering. “I won’t go back.”
“No, sonny, that you won’t, if I can help it,” returned Mr. Jolly, with an emphatic tap of his hammer. “They didn’t serve you right, and that’s a fact. It’s the little Bliss boy,” he explained to Lydia. “What did you say your name was?”
“Roger,” murmured the child huskily.
“His father and mother just died, and there’s no one to take care of him, so Farmer Yetter said he’d take him and bring him up with his own boy sooner than see him go to the poorhouse. But he says he didn’t have much to eat, and they worked him hard for such a little feller, and the big boy plagued him. So last night he up and run away, and this morning I found him asleep in my shop.”
“I won’t go back,” insisted Roger, as Mr. Jolly paused for breath. “I won’t go back. He pinched me. He hit me with the harness.” And pushing back his sleeve, he showed great black-and-blue spots on his thin little arm.