“Not a bit,” Clem assured him heartily. If he had, he had forgotten it now. “Awfully glad to have you, Jim.”
“I hope you mean that.” Jim laughed sheepishly. “I tried hard to get that letter back after I’d posted it, but it happened that the fellow who carried the mail out got started half an hour earlier that morning, and I was too late.”
“Glad you were,” said Clem, and meant it. “Hope you don’t mind having Mart’s things left around. He thinks now he will come back next year and finish out.”
Jim looked about the room and shook his head. “Mighty nice,” he said. “I’ve got a few things upstairs that I’ll have to move out, but they ain’t scarcely suitable for here: there’s a cushion and a couple of pictures and a sort of a thing for books and two, three little things besides.”
“Bring them down and we’ll look them over,” said Clem. “What you don’t want to use can go in your trunk when you send it down to the store-room. Don’t believe we need any more cushions, though.” He thought he knew which of the cushions in Number 29 was Jim’s! “Too much in a place is worse than too little, eh?”
“I suppose ’tis,” Jim agreed. “This room’s right pretty now, Harland, and I guess those things of mine wouldn’t better it none.”
“You’ll have to stop calling me ‘Harland’ sooner or later,” said Clem, “so you might as well start now, Jim.”
Jim nodded. “I was trying to work ’round to it,” he answered. “Guess I’ll go up and get those things of mine out of 29.”
“I’ll give you a hand,” said Clem.