"Good gracious, Rob! What has happened?" cried the astonished woman.
"Only a little scrap, Aunt Alice, that I couldn't help getting into on Jo's account."
"Was that China boy mixed up in it? But, of course, he was. I've felt it from the first that he'd make trouble."
"But it wasn't his fault, Aunt Alice; I'm sure of that," asserted Rob, earnestly. "He was being shamefully abused by the muckers, who came mighty near killing him."
The next half-hour, with breakfast entirely forgotten, was devoted to explanations, and, by the end of that time, the whole affair was pretty thoroughly understood. Jo's sufferings at the hands of his tormentors had the one good effect of transforming Mrs. Hinckley's mistrust of him into a warm sympathy that afterwards developed into a real liking for the gentle fellow.
A little later, while they were at breakfast, came the expected summons for Mr. Hinckley, his nephew Robert Hinckley, and a Chinese lad known to be an inmate of the parsonage, to appear at ten o'clock that very morning in Justice Burtis's court-room for examination in connection with the recent fracas on Hatton common.
While Mr. Hinckley went to see the justice and prefer charges against several of the young muckers, whose names had been given him by Rob, for assaulting his ward, Joseph Lee, the two lads changed their clothing and prepared to make a respectable appearance in court. While they were thus engaged, Rob, to the delight of both of them, found his early knowledge of Chinese returning to him so rapidly that he was able to understand much of what Jo said.
Acting on Mr. Hinckley's advice, the latter arrayed himself in his very richest robes, and Mrs. Hinckley's sympathy so far overcame her prejudice that, when she discovered him making a sorry attempt to do up his queue, she offered to braid it for him.
"To think that I ever should do such a thing!" she exclaimed. "But, Rob, what do you suppose he wants all this white stuff worked into it for?" she added. "I'm sure his pig-tail is long enough without it."
The white stuff thus referred to was some strands of silk braid and a silken tassel, and, after asking Jo concerning it, Rob explained to his aunt that, as white is the Chinese color for mourning, their young guest wore it in memory of his mother, who had died less than a year before.