"Yes," answered Lizzie. Something in Lizzie's expression, in her tone, roused Becky's wandering memory, and with a sudden flash of her old mischief she said,—
"He's a fren' o' mine. Show up, Tim, and lemme interduce yer."
There was a movement on the other side of the table where Becky lay; and then Lizzie saw, struggling up from a chair, a tiny crippled body, wasted and shrunken,—the body of a child of seven with a shapely head and the face of an intelligent boy of fifteen.
"That's him,—that's Tim,—the fightin' gen'leman I tole yer 'bout," said Becky, with a gay little smile at the remembrance of her joke and how she "played it on 'em," and at the look of astonishment now on Lizzie's face. And still with the gay little smile, but fainter voice,—
"Yer'll tell 'em, Lizzie,—the girls in the store,—how I played it on 'em; and when I git back—I'll—"
"Give her some air; she's faint," cried one of the women.
The tall young rough, Jake, sprang to the window and pulled it open, letting in a fresh wind that blew straight up from the grassy banks beyond the Cove.
"Do yer feel better, Becky?" he asked, as he saw her face brighten.
"I—I feel fus' rate—all well, Jake, and—I—I smell the Mayflowers. They warn't burnt, were they? And oh, ain't they jolly, ain't they jolly! Tim, Tim!"
"Yes, yes, Becky," answered Tim, in a shaking voice.