Of course, when Carolyn May arrived at home, the story had to be told all over again to Aunty Rose Kennedy—all the details, even to Prince’s feast of chicken bones. If the housekeeper was surprised—as Joseph Stagg had been—that the carpenter should take the injured man into his house, she did not say so.
“A mighty plucky youngster, this Car’lyn May of ours,” Uncle Joe remarked. “What do you say, Aunty Rose?”
“She is, indeed, Joseph Stagg,” agreed the woman.
Carolyn May was very much excited over the adventure, and, although it snowed some that night and the paths were drifted full in places, she wanted greatly to go down to the Parlow house the next day to see her “sailor man,” as she called the unfortunate she had assisted.
Naturally, she could not expect Uncle Joe to stop and ask how the sailor was, he not being on speaking terms with the Parlows; but the hardware dealer did pick up a morsel of news about the stranger and brought it home at noon time to detail to Aunty Rose and the little girl at the dinner table.
“I tell you,” Mr. Stagg maintained, “Jed Parlow’s had a change of heart, or something. Know what he’s done?”
“I could not guess, Joseph Stagg,” said Aunty Rose austerely.
“Why, he’s letting that old tramp Car’lyn May picked up stay there till he gets well enough to work, so they tell me. Who ever heard the like? And Jed hasn’t a blessed thing for a man like that tramp to do at this time of year.”
“It’s Miss Amanda that lets him stay, I guess,” said Carolyn May with a wise little nod of her sunny head.
“Hum!” grunted her uncle. “Time was when Jed Parlow wouldn’t have played the part of a good Samaritan to the Angel Gabriel himself.”