“I’m only Tim Babbige, an’ this is Tip. We was tryin’ to find a place to sleep last night, when we met Sam, an’ after we’d found the cow we went down to the store an’ bought some candy, an’ when we come back Sam was goin’ to ask you to let me sleep in the barn, but you was in bed; so he said it was all right for me to come up here an’ sleep with him. I’m awful sorry I did it, an’ sorry Tip acted so bad; but if you won’t scold we’ll go right straight away.”
Mrs. Simpson was by no means a hard-hearted woman, and the boy’s explanation, as well as his piteous way of making it, caused her to feel kindly disposed toward him. She asked him about himself; and by the time he had finished telling of the death of his parents, the cruel treatment he had received from Captain and Mrs. Babbige, and of his desperate attempt at bettering his condition, her womanly heart had a great deal of sympathy in it for him.
Then Tim added, as if it was the last of his pitiful story, “Me an’ Tip ain’t got anybody who cares for us but each other, an’ if we don’t get a chance to work, so’s we can get some place to live, I don’t know what we will do.” Then he laid his head on the dog’s nose, and cried as though his little heart were breaking, while Tip set up a series of most doleful howls.
“You poor child,” said the good woman, kindly, “you’re not large enough to work for your living, and I don’t know what Mr. Simpson will say to your being here very long; but you shall stay till we see what can be done for you, whatever he says. Now, don’t cry any more, but dress yourself, and come down-stairs and help me clean up the litter the dog and I made. Sam, you lazy boy,” she added, as she turned toward her half-concealed son, “get up and dress yourself. You ought to be ashamed for not telling me last night what you were about.”
Then, patting Tim on the head, the good woman went down-stairs to attend to her household duties.
As soon as the sound of the closing door told that his mother had left the room Sam rolled out of bed, much as a duck gets out of her nest, and said triumphantly to Tim, who was busy dressing, “Well, we got out of that scrape all right, didn’t we?”
Tim looked up at him reproachfully, remembering Sam’s silence when the affair looked so dark; but he contented himself with simply saying, “Yes, it’s all right till we see what your father will say about it.”
“Oh, he won’t say anything so long as mother don’t,” was the confident reply; and the conversation was ended by Tim going down-stairs to help Mrs. Simpson in repairing the damage done by Tip.
Before he had been helping her very long he showed himself so apt at such work that she asked, “How does it happen that you are so handy at such things?”