“Yes, Jim, I quite understand now, and I know you will never be a coward. Here’s the bell, you know. You can press the button if you want anything, and the maid sleeps in the next room. She’ll be up in a few minutes.”
“Yes’m.” A little drowsiness was creeping into Jim’s voice already.
“Good-night, dear.”
“Good-night,” Jim murmured and Laura went away, but she left the door open into the lighted hall, and when she slipped back a little later the boy was asleep.
When the other Camp Fire Girls learned about “Miss Laura’s boy” they were all interested in him, and begged that he might come to the next Council meeting. Jim was sitting up most of the day now, and his wheelchair was rolled into the room after all the girls had come. He was dressed and sat up very straight, but though he was much better, his face was still very thin and white.
“All but one of my girls are here to-night, Jim,” Miss Laura told him. “I’m going to introduce you to them and see how many of the names you can remember.”
“Why isn’t that other one here?” he demanded.
“She couldn’t come this time,” Laura said with a glance at Olga, sitting grave and silent a little apart from the others.
The girls gathered about the wheelchair and Jim held out his hand to each one as Laura mentioned her name. His gray eyes searched each face, but he said nothing until Lena Barton flung him a careless nod and would have passed on, but he caught her hand and laughed up into the freckled face with the bunch of red frizzes puffed out on each side in the “latest moment” fashion.
“Hello, Carrots,” he called in the tone of jovial good-fellowship, “I like you, ’cause you look like a fellow I used to sit with in school. His name was Barton too—Jo Barton. O, I say,” leaning forward eagerly, “mebbe he’s your brother?”