Jim’s plain little face brightened into keen interest. “That’s bully!” he cried. “I’m going to be a Scout soon’s I’m big enough—if I can.” The wistful longing in the last words brought a mist into Frances’s eyes, but Jim did not see it. He was looking at the other girls. “Any of the rest of you got brothers?” he demanded.
“I have one, but he’s a big fellow, twice as old as you are,” Alice Reynolds said.
“And I’ve six,” Mary Hastings told him. “Two of them are Scouts.”
“Fine!” exulted Jim. “Say—tell me what they do, all about it,” he pleaded, and sitting down on the edge of his cot, Mary told him everything she could think of about the scouting.
When Miss Laura came back Jim’s face was radiant. “She’s been telling me about her brothers—they’re Boy Scouts,” he cried eagerly, pointing a stubby finger at Mary. “I wish,” he looked pleadingly into Mary’s eyes, “I do wish they’d come and see me; but I guess boys don’t come to hospitals ’thout they have to,” he ended with a sigh.
“I’ll get them to come if I can,” Mary promised, “but——”
“I know,” Jim nodded, “I guess they won’t have time. There’s so many things for boys to do outdoors!”
“Jim,” said Miss Laura, “there are so many things for you to do outdoors too. You must get well as fast as you can to be at them.”
Jim’s lips took on a most unchildlike set, and his eyes searched her face with a look she could not understand. “I—I d’know——” he said vaguely.
He could not put into words his fear and dread of the time when he must go out into some Home where he would be only one of a hundred boys and all alone in a big lonesome world. That was the black dread that weighed on Jim’s heart night and day. He had seen that long procession of girls and boys from the Orphan Asylum going back from church on Sundays, the girls all in white dresses, the boys in blue denim suits, all just alike except for size. He had peeped through knotholes in the high fence that surrounded the Asylum yard too, and had seen the boys playing there on weekdays; and some not playing, but standing off by themselves looking so awful lonesome. Jim had always pitied those lonesome-looking ones. More than once he had poked a stick of chewing-gum through a knothole to one of them—a little chap with frightened blue eyes. Jim felt that he’d almost rather die than go to the Asylum; and he’d heard the nurse tell Charley Smith’s mother that he’d have to go there when he got well. That was why Jim was in no hurry to get well.