Jean started for the pantry after butter and sugar, but in the passageway was a little window looking out at the back of the driveway, and she stopped short. Dodging out of sight behind a pile of wood that was waiting to be split, was a familiar figure. Without waiting to call the girls, she slipped quietly around the house and there, sure enough, backed up against the woodshed, his nose fairly blue from the cold, was Joe.
“Don’t—don’t let Shad know I’m here,” he said anxiously. “He’ll lick me fearfully if he catches me.”
“Oh, Joe,” Jean exclaimed happily. “Come here this minute. Nobody’s going to touch you, don’t you know that? Aren’t you hungry?”
Joe nodded mutely. He didn’t look one bit ashamed; just eager and glad to be back home. Jean put her arm around him, patting him as her mother would have done, and leading him to the kitchen. And down in the barn doorway stood Shad, open mouthed and staring.
“Well, I’ll be honswoggled if that little creetur ain’t come back home to roost,” he said to himself. In the kitchen Joe was getting thawed out and welcomed home. And finally the truth came out.
“I went hunting my dad down around Norwich,” he confessed.
“Did you find him?” cried Doris.
Joe nodded happily.
“Braced him up too. He says he won’t drink any more ‘cause it’ll disgrace me. He’s gone to work up there in the lockshop steady. He wanted me to stay with him, but as soon as I got him braced up, I came back here. You didn’t get my letter, did you? I left it stuck in the clock.”
Stuck in the clock? Jean looked up at the old eight-day Seth Thomas on the kitchen mantel that they had bought from old Mr. Weaver. It was made of black walnut, with green vines painted on it and morning glories rambling in wreaths around its borders. She opened the little glass door and felt inside. Sure enough, tucked far back, there was Joe’s farewell letter, put carefully where nobody would ever think of finding it. Written laboriously in pencil it was, and Jean read it aloud.