Silence yet. Babbie swallowed hard:
"I—I don't think I like eccen-tricks, Uncle Jed," she faltered.
Not a word. Then Jed, stooping to pick up a piece of wood from the pile of cut stock beside the lathe, was conscious of a little sniff. He looked up. His small visitor's lip was quivering and two big tears were just ready to overflow her lower lashes.
"Eh? . . . Mercy sakes alive!" he exclaimed. "Why, what's the matter?"
The lip quivered still more. "I—I don't like to have you not speak to me," sobbed Babbie. "You—you never did it so—so long before."
That appeal was sufficient. Away, for the time, went Jed's pessimism and his hopeless musings. He forgot that he was a fool, the "town crank," and of no use in the world. He forgot his own heartbreak, chagrin and disappointment. A moment later Babbie was on his knee, hiding her emotion in the front of his jacket, and he was trying his best to soothe her with characteristic Winslow nonsense.
"You mustn't mind me, Babbie," he declared. "My—my head ain't workin' just right to-day, seems so. I shouldn't wonder if—if I wound it too tight, or somethin' like that."
Babbie's tear-stained face emerged from the jacket front.
"Wound your HEAD too tight, Uncle Jed?" she cried.
"Ye-es, yes. I was kind of extra absent-minded yesterday and I thought I wound the clock, but I couldn't have done that 'cause the clock's stopped. Yet I know I wound somethin' and it's just as liable to have been my head as anything else. You listen just back of my starboard ear there and see if I'm tickin' reg'lar."