When the dinner-table was laid, Miss Lucinda rang her seldom-used bell out of the back door, and the boy came in promptly, with quite a color in his cheeks.
“My!” he exclaimed, staring at the neat, plentiful table, “ain’t this a feed!”
“You’d better go and wash your hands,” Miss Lucinda suggested, and the boy went cheerily to the sink, scrubbing himself vigorously and then wiping his hands on the spick-and-span roller. Miss Lucinda groaned at the great black marks on the towel, and went out into the kitchen to turn it about so that she might not have to look at them through the dining-room doorway.
“Mercy on us!” she cried in distress as she came out into the kitchen, “you’ve left the door open. The house’ll be full of flies!”
“Now, don’t you trouble,” the boy said soothingly. “I’ll catch every single fly that’s got in. I’m a great flycatcher, I am. I’m used to flies.”
At the table, conversation did not at all flourish. Miss Lucinda had heard of a boy’s appetite, but she had never dreamed of such awful capacity as this young person displayed. After he had taken the first keen edge from his hunger he laid down his knife and fork and looked at her inquiringly.
“Should you mind if I was to call you aunt?” he asked smilingly. “You know I useter live with my aunt, and I’m kinder useter sayin’ it.”
“I think it would be better if you called me Miss Tarbox,” Miss Lucinda said, surprised, but not thrown off her guard.
“That’s rather long,” the boy said meditatively; “but I guess if I say it often enough I kin git it Miss Tarbox, Misstarbox, Misstubox, Misstibox, Miss—”
“Don’t say that over again, for goodness’ sake,” Miss Lucinda said irritably. “What is your name?”