"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Oh, is it for me."
Jed answered.
"'Tis, if you want it," he said.
"Want it? Why, Mamma, it's one of the very best mills! It's a five dollar one, Mamma!"
Mrs. Armstrong protested. "Oh, I couldn't let you do that, Mr. Winslow," she declared. "It is much too expensive a present. And besides—"
She checked herself just in time. It had been on the tip of her tongue to say that she did not know what they could do with it. Their rooms at Mrs. Smalley's were not large. It was as if a dweller in a Harlem flat had been presented with a hippopotamus.
The maker of the mill looked about him, plainly seeking a place to deposit his burden.
"'Tisn't anything much," he said, hastily. "I—I'm real glad for you to have it."
He was about to put it on top of the cookstove, in which there was a roaring fire, but Mrs. Armstrong, by a startled exclamation and a frantic rush, prevented his doing so. So he put it on the table instead. Barbara thanked him profusely. She was overjoyed; there were no comparisons with hippopotami in HER mind. Jed seemed pleased at her appreciation, but he did not smile. Instead he sighed.
"I—I just thought I wanted her to have it, ma'am," he said, turning to Mrs. Armstrong. "'Twould keep her from—from forgettin' me altogether, maybe. . . . Not that there's any real reason why she should remember me, of course," he added.