Jeff was there as soon as the penny. “Tails! we are even still. The next will decide.” he exclaimed, pushing back his hair and straightening himself for the final throw.
Mr. and Mrs. Taylor scarcely moved, and Jeff was greatly excited as if he felt that more than Chicago was trembling in the scale.
“Git!” he said, and the copper went spinning in the air and then rolled to Mrs. Taylor’s feet. “Heads! Hurrah! Chicago has won!” was Jeff’s joyful cry as he picked up the coin and showed it to Mr. Taylor, who said, “Yes, it’s heads plain enough. Queer you should throw that all the time, and I tails. Accordin’ to the bargain I s’pose you’ll go.”
The sight of Mr. Taylor’s face clouded Jeff’s a little, and he offered to throw again. But Mr. Taylor said, “No. You belong to Mark. He took you from the street. You are in a way connected with him far back. You must go.”
“When you are real old I’ll come and take care of you,” Jeff said by way of comfort, and then went hurrying to the kitchen to tell of his good luck.
“What must be done may as well be done at once,” was Mrs. Taylor’s theory, and in less than a week the Chicago express from Boston carried with it a boy whose eyes were full of tears and whose face was close to the window as long as a spire or treetop of Ridgefield was in sight.
Jeff was gone; a new clerk took his place, and the house seemed lonelier than ever as the dark November days came on, and they missed the active boy everywhere. Mark had telegraphed his safe arrival and three weeks later there came a short letter from him.
“Dear and reverend friends,” it began. “I am well. How are you yourselves? How is Sarah and Martha and Sam, and the rest of the folks? My eye! isn’t Chicago a buster! Beats Boston all holler, and ain’t our house on Michigan avenue a grand one! You never seen such furniture in all your life, nor nobody else. We moved in a week ago, and we’ve got seven servants to wait on us three, for I ain’t a servant. I guess Mr. and Miss Hilton disagreed about me a little, for I overheard ’em talkin’ before we left the Sherman House. She wanted to dress me up in livery with brass buttons. What for I don’t know. He said I was to go to school in the same voice he used to say to me, ‘Jeff, behave yourself.’ So I’m goin’, and the servants call me Master Jefferson. Ain’t that funny?
“I hain’t forgot you, and once in a while I feel homesick for the old place and snivel a little. I can’t turn summersets here and I can’t do a lot of things, but couldn’t I pick a pile of pockets on the street. I shan’t though. I promised Miss Alice I wouldn’t, and I won’t. When you hear from her give her my best respects and the same to yourselves.
“Yours to command,