“Sh—!” Big Jim shushed Little Tom Till and the man grinned with a twinkle in his eyes and I saw that the edge of one of his upper incisors had gold on it.
“That’s all right. I can describe it for you,” he said, which he did, giving all the details. “It has a tooled flying horse on the leather on the back and the initials F. E., and the name Frances Everhard in the inside on the identification card. The license number of our car is 7-34567. I was just ready to start looking for it.”
There was something about the man that I liked although there was an expression in his eyes that made it seem like he was a little bit worried. I could tell he was the kind of man that would be kind to his wife or his children’s mother—as Pop is to Mom. He might even be willing to do the dishes for her without being asked if she was extra tired. I noticed he kept looking at Little Jim like he thought he was a very wonderful person.
“So you found it, did you, young man?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Little Jim piped up in his mouse-like voice.
“Well, I want to thank you. I have a reward for you. If you boys come back later, say in about an hour, my wife will wish to thank you in person. She has some cookies that she bought on purpose for you—just in case you happened to call to see us. She is having her nap now—doctor’s orders are for her to sleep an hour every afternoon, you know.”
We let the man have the billfold, which he took, and without opening it, shoved it into his hip pocket. “Frances will be so thankful. I think she doesn’t know she lost it yet—and maybe we won’t tell her, eh?”
We promised we wouldn’t and he started to walk backwards a little, which meant he was through visiting and we could go on home or somewhere.
“Wait,” Mr. Everhard said and stopped as also did we because we had also started to start in our own direction. “How would one of you boys like to earn a quarter every day by bringing our drinking water from the spring—or from up there at the Collins family house? One of you the Collins boy?”
I could feel myself blushing all over my freckled face, clear up to the roots of my red hair and I started to say, “Yes,” but Dragonfly beat me to it by saying, “He is,”—jerking his thumb in my direction.