“Well, let me see!” considered Pete. “I ain’t paying any fancy price at start, fur I don’t know how things will work out; but I won’t be mean with you, Dan. What do you say to four dollars a week and board?”
“No,” answered Dan, promptly. “I don’t want your board at all.”
“Ye don’t?” said Pete in surprise. “It will be good board, Dan: no fancy fixings but filling, I promise you that,—good and filling.”
“I don’t care how filling it is,” answered Dan, gruffly. “I’d want my own board, with Aunt Winnie. That’s all I’d come to you for,—to take care of Aunt Winnie.”
“Ain’t they good to her where she is?” asked Pete, who knew something of the family history.
“Yes,” answered Dan; “but she is not happy: she is homesick, and I want to bring her—home.”
And something in the tone of the boyish voice told Pete that, with Aunt Winnie and a home, Dan would be secured as his faithful henchman forever.
“I don’t blame you,” he said. “I’ve got an old mother myself, and if I took her out of her little cubby-hole of a house and put her in the marble halls that folks sing about, she’d be pining. It’s women nature, specially old women. Can’t tear ’em up by the roots when they’re past sixty. And that old aunt of yours has been good to you sure,—good as a mother.”
“Yes,” answered Dan, a little huskily, “good as a mother.”
“Then you oughtn’t to go back on her sure,” said Pete, reflectively. “Considering the old lady, I’ll make it five dollars a week, if you’ll agree for a year ahead, Dan.”