“I’m coming in,” he said. “I want to tell you how it happened that I am bringing him home.”
“Is David——?” she managed to articulate.
“Oh, nothing has happened to Whitcomb—no accident, I mean. Go in; you’re chilled through.”
She had taken off Jimmy’s coat and cap, and the child, half awake, was nestled in her arms, when Jarvis followed her into the lighted room, with its table daintily set for three, and its cheer of burning logs, which Barbara had stirred to a blaze.
She looked at him in piteous silence as he stood, a tall, sombre figure at her fireside, looking down at her with eyes full of a brooding tenderness of which he was only half aware. He was anxiously searching for words which would hurt least; for a balm of comfort which, he knew, did not exist.
Jimmy, rubbing the sleep out of his brown eyes, sat up suddenly in Barbara’s lap.
“David didn’t let me stay wiv him,” he quavered. “He—he made me det out ’n’—’n’ he dave me some money; ’n’ a big boy pushed me over and took it away. I ran after David ’n’ called him loud; but he didn’t hear me. ’Nen I got lost.”
“I found him,” said Jarvis, “asleep on some straw in the comer of an empty stall.”
He smiled reassuringly at Barbara.
“The boy appears to need a general washing and putting to rights, I should say; but he isn’t hungry.”