But she had no sooner received it, and murmured her hasty “Thank you,” than she demanded, “Jim! Jim! I want Jim!”
Ah! my lord had forgotten “Jim,” and he watched curiously as the shy fellow made his way through the crowd to Bob’s side.
“Here, Jim! I’ve won it. It’s all for you. For your consumption,—your mother’s, I mean. That is, I’m going to give it to you if you’ll promise me one thing. You will, won’t you, dear Jim?”
“I—I—Miss Steenie—I don’t understand.”
“Please don’t be stupid, Jim! Think. Didn’t you tell me ’bout the dear old mother an’ her consumption, an’ how, if it wasn’t for your ‘habits,’ you’d bring her out to California to live in the sunshine; but fast as you get your wages, away they go on your ‘habits’? Didn’t you, Jim Sutton?”
“Ye-es,” shamefacedly.
“Well, you thought the Little Un didn’t know what ‘habits’ were; but I asked my father, and he says your ‘habits’ make you drink bad liquor an’ stuff, an’ waste your earnings. You’re a good man, my father says, an’ trustible, only for them. So now, you see, we’ve got ahead of them for once; and I want you to take this money and send to that cold place and bring that good old mother right away out here. Then you won’t be lonesome when I’m gone, and she’ll keep you out of ‘habits,’ like you said she could. Will you?”
“Will I, Little Un? You bet! An’—an’—I can’t talk. Bob, you take it. You say sunthin’ fer me,—purty, like it orter be said. But—Lord!—I can’t—she ain’t—no Little Un, no ‘Mascot,’ she ain’t; she’s a genooine-angel!”
And Steenie wondered why almost everybody cried.