"Oh, no!" Joyce laughed gleefully. "Don't you see, he—he knows me. He—he—does like—me—he's going to stay, and he takes this heavenly way to show it."
"The deuce he does!" and now Gaston laughed. "He's going to be a comical imp, if I don't miss my guess. See, he's calming down now, and regulating his features."
"But—he—smiled!" And just then Jude came around the corner of the house.
Gaston saw the expression of his face, and something stifled him for a moment. He wondered if money was always going to be a check to Jude, after all.
And if it should cease to hold him in leash—then what would happen?
He went away soon after, but he sat up until toward daylight, just outside his shack. He feared something was going to occur. But nothing did; and the next thing in Joyce's life story that tugged at his heart-strings, was the sickness and sudden death of little Malcolm.
CHAPTER IX
It was the evening of the day that the baby had been laid under a slim, tall young pine tree back of the little house.