Jim shook his head and looked at her solemnly. “I ain’t got no suit. The fellers won’t let you march without one. Never mind, I’ve given up lots of things. My aunt wa’nt much of a hand for doin’ things, you know.”
Jim had never asked Miss Lucinda to kiss him good-night since that first time, when he felt so markedly homesick, and certainly she would never have offered to kiss him, so she merely said, as he took his light to go upstairs, “Good-night, Jim.”
But she sat down in her rocking-chair, quite near the dining-room door, with an expectant listening expression on her face. Suddenly there arose a great commotion above, and Jim came tumbling down the stairs with wild shrieks of delight.
“Oh, my gracious! oh, my gracious!” he cried. “Look-a-here, did you do it? Ain’t they butes? I kin march now, can’t I? Oh, my Jimi—my gracious, my gracious!” And he danced about the room, first on one foot and then on the other, waving in one hand a wonderful pair of red, white, and blue trousers, in the other a similarly gorgeous jacket.
Miss Lucinda was really frightened; she was not used to such demonstrations of joy. But Jim stopped his dancing presently, and, throwing his cherished outfit on the floor, he embraced her rapturously, until she gravely extricated herself.
“I’m glad you like it, Jim,” she said a little stiffly.
“Like it!” Jim shrieked, throwing himself about in another wild pantomime. “Like it! Oh, my gracious, I’m ’fraid I shall bust!”
“I think you had better go to bed now,” Miss Lucinda said, after a pause.
Jim gathered up his suit and looked at her anxiously. “Should you mind if I was to git up dreadful early, if I didn’t wake you up?” he asked.