“Yes, I am really.” Poor Christopher began to feel embarrassed and a little disappointed.
He was Jim Hibbault at that moment and he felt queerly lonely and stranded.
Martha pulled down her sleeves and went to the inner door.
“Jessie, come out ’ere,” she screamed.
Christopher felt his heart go thump. He had almost forgotten Jessie, yet Jessie had been more to him than Martha in other days. It was Jessie who had taken him for walks, carried him up the steep stairs on her back, shared sweets with him, cuffed her brother Sam when they fought, and had finally taken little Jim Hibbault back to his mother when the great clock in the distance struck six,—Jessie, who at eleven had been a complete little mother and was at sixteen a tall, lanky, untidy girl who had inherited the curling pins of her mother and whose good-natured, not ill-looking face was not improved thereby.
She came to the doorway and stood looking over her mother’s arm at Christopher.
“Ever seed ’im afore?” demanded Mrs. Sartin.
“Well I never, if it ain’t Jimmy!” cried Jessie, beaming, and Christopher could have embraced her if it were in accordance with the custom of his years, and he felt less inclined to bolt down the stairs out of reach of his adventure.
Neither of the two women expressed any pleasure at his appearance. Mrs. Sartin accepted her daughter’s recognition of their visitor as sufficient evidence it was not a hoax, and asked Christopher in.
The room, though the window was open, smelt just as stuffy as of old, and a familiar litter of toys and odds and ends strewed the floor. Christopher missed 108 the big tea-tray and Britannia metal teapot, but the sofa with broken springs was still there, covered as it had ever been with the greater part of the family wardrobe.