I had advertised my cedar chests in the magazines during the summer, and orders began to pour in, so that I was kept busy in my workshop. Those were busy days in the house as well, for, with the beginning of September, Joey had started to school at Roselake, and many of the small duties he had taken upon his young shoulders devolved upon me.
Oh, the day on which Joey started to school!
I dressed him carefully that morning, with all the trepidation of an over-fond parent, and I admonished him concerning his demeanor in the school-room until I am sure his small head must have been in a whirl, and his little heart in a flutter of apprehension.
“I’ll do my best, Mr. David, dear,” he said bravely. “You said yourself they can’t no one do more.” He hesitated and looked at me, reddening painfully. “And if the teacher asks me who am I—and who’s—who’s my father—what am I to tell her?”
My hand closed on his shoulder fiercely. “Tell her you are Mr. Dale’s boy, from Cedar Dale—tell her your name is Joey Dale,” I cried. The look on his face had stabbed me.
He considered, looking into my eyes awesomely as I took his chin in my hand.
“If I have the Dale part, couldn’t I have the David, too?” he suggested. “Hm! Then we’d be big David and little David.”
“David Dale, the second,” I said, poking him in the ribs.
“But there couldn’t be any David Dale, the second. There couldn’t never be but one real David Dale. But there could be a little David.”
A little David!