“She always loved that kind o’ flowers. He fetched ’em for her every morning, and she always kissed him. They was from away north somers—she kep’ school when she fust come. Goodness knows what’s to become o’ that po’ boy. No father, no mother, no kin folks of no kind. Nobody to go to, nobody that k’yers for him—and all of us is so put to it for to get along and families so large.”
Hawkins understood. All eyes were turned inquiringly upon him. He said:
“Friends, I am not very well provided for, myself, but still I would not turn my back on a homeless orphan. If he will go with me I will give him a home, and loving regard—I will do for him as I would have another do for a child of my own in misfortune.”
One after another the people stepped forward and wrung the stranger’s hand with cordial good will, and their eyes looked all that their hands could not express or their lips speak.
“Said like a true man,” said one.
“You was a stranger to me a minute ago, but you ain’t now,” said another.
“It’s bread cast upon the waters—it’ll return after many days,” said the old lady whom we have heard speak before.
“You got to camp in my house as long as you hang out here,” said one. “If tha hain’t room for you and yourn my tribe’ll turn out and camp in the hay loft.”
A few minutes afterward, while the preparations for the funeral were being concluded, Mr. Hawkins arrived at his wagon leading his little waif by the hand, and told his wife all that had happened, and asked her if he had done right in giving to her and to himself this new care? She said:
“If you’ve done wrong, Si Hawkins, it’s a wrong that will shine brighter at the judgment day than the rights that many a man has done before you. And there isn’t any compliment you can pay me equal to doing a thing like this and finishing it up, just taking it for granted that I’ll be willing to it. Willing? Come to me; you poor motherless boy, and let me take your grief and help you carry it.”