"Yes!" wept Dee with real Tucker tears, "he has to go back with his grandfather."
"Grandpaw? That there ain't no grandpaw, that young gent."
"Yes, he is," sobbed Dee. "He is just as much Jo Jo's grandfather as I am his mother, and I am certainly all the mother he has, poor lamb," and the kindly coloured man looked very sorry for the grieving young mother.
"Is you fo'ced by circumstantials over which you ain't got controlment to abandon yo' offspring?" he questioned.
"Yes," blundered Dee, something rare with her, "I have to go to boarding school and they don't allow do——babies there."
"Well, well, too bad! Too bad! It pears like a pity you couldn't a got studyin' off'n yo mind befo' you indulged in matrimonial venturesomes. When a young lady gits married, she—"
"Oh, I'm not married!" The porter's eyes turned white, he rolled them up so far. Dee saw her break and hastened to her own rescue. The rest of us were petrified with suppressed merriment. "That is, I'm not to say much married; you see, my husband is dead."
"Oh! Sorrow is indeed visited you early. But grieve not. One so young as you is kin git many husbands, perhaps, befo' the day of recognition arrives."
We were glad when his duties called him off because the laugh in us was obliged to come out. Our train backed up to get on the other track and the last we saw of Zebedee and Harvie they were standing in dejected attitudes, Zebedee grasping a squirming Brindle firmly in his arms while Harvie, acting as train-bearer, gracefully held aloft the trailing petticoat. Brindle had espied through the blue veil a possible canine acquaintance and was struggling with all his might to get down and make either a friend or enemy as the case might prove.
Dee simply had to stop crying; in fact, she had stopped long before she felt that she should. She was forced to squeeze tears out to keep up the deception she had begun.