"A friend gave that to me long ago when we were boy and girl together at school," she told Jims once. "I never take it off, night or day. When I die it is to be buried with me."
"You mustn't die till I do," said Jims in dismay.
"Oh, Jims, if we could only live together nothing else would matter," she said hungrily. "Jims—Jims—I see so little of you really—and some day soon you'll be going to school—and I'll lose you."
"I've got to think of some way to prevent it," cried Jims. "I won't have it. I won't—I won't."
But his heart sank notwithstanding.
One day Jims slipped from the blue room, down the pine and across the lawn with a tear-stained face.
"Aunt Augusta is going to kill my gobbler," he sobbed in Miss Avery's arms. "She says she isn't going to bother with him any longer—and he's getting old—and he's to be killed. And that gobbler is the only friend I have in the world except you. Oh, I can't stand it, Miss Avery."
Next day Aunt Augusta told him the gobbler had been sold and taken away. And Jims flew into a passion of tears and protest about it and was promptly incarcerated in the blue room. A few minutes later a sobbing boy plunged through the trees—and stopped abruptly. Miss Avery was reading under the beech and the Black Prince was snoozing on her knee—and a big, magnificent, bronze turkey was parading about on the lawn, twisting his huge fan of a tail this way and that.
"My gobbler!" cried Jims.
"Yes. Martha went to your uncle's house and bought him. Oh, she didn't betray you. She told Nancy Jane she wanted a gobbler and, having seen one over there, thought perhaps she could get him. See, here's your pet, Jims, and here he shall live till he dies of old age. And I have something else for you—Edward and Martha went across the river yesterday to the Murray Kennels and got it for you."