Jimsy's eyes were very grateful and it came over the first citizen with sickening conviction that Jimsy, misinterpreting again, had regarded the biscuit as an overture instead of a show of power. Ridiculous indeed to have thrown about your neck the unwelcome chain of a boy's regard and then unintentionally to cement that chain—by a biscuit!
Abner Sawyer departed hastily for his lamp, his fire and his paper.
Jimsy followed Aunt Judith to the kitchen and here, in the shining quiet of an old-fashioned kitchen whose spotless rows of pans and its rocker by the window reflected nothing of first citizenship, the memory-making mystery of child and woman in a homely setting drew taut an age-old chord of sympathy. Out of the hum of the kettle and the fire-shadows of the grate it came, out of the winter wind that rattled the checkerpaned windows—that eternal something that is only given to women to understand. Jimsy did not know why Aunt Judith smiled or why the smile made his throat hurt a little. He only knew by her eyes that she liked him and that was enough.
"Aunt Judith," he blurted, "lemme—aw, lemme wipe your dishes."
But Aunt Judith, with the wisdom of women, knew that the best-behaved china is perversely given to leaping without warning out of the hands of any boy, to his utter consternation, and she patted him on the back.
"Bless your heart, Jimsy," she said, "there are so few I can do them myself in no time."
Jimsy!—not James! Jimsy felt that he must do something for Aunt Judith Sawyer or his throat would burst. So finding one leg at liberty, he furtively kicked the leg of the stove and hurt his toe, even as his eyes fell upon a depleted stock of kindlings in the wood-box.
