"Jim Dandy, sah," the boy answered.
"Whom do you live with?"
"I lives wid Aunty," the boy said, and his manner now showed that he was getting embarrassed, for he did not giggle, but smiled nervously.
"Where does Aunty live?" Mr. Prettyman inquired.
I suspect that this question made Jim Dandy fear that Mr. Prettyman did not have as much sense as a gentleman living in a fine house in town ought to have. He hesitated a moment, and then, moving his head sideways, said, "Aunty, she live over yonder."
This was most indefinite, but it was evidently the best that Jim Dandy could do for the moment, so Mr. Prettyman took him round to the kitchen at the back of the house and put him in charge of the cook, who was also the old housekeeper. And so Jim Dandy was engaged. In the course of an hour he was trying to learn his way about the house and feel comfortable in a suit of blue clothes with many brass buttons. But there was another ordeal for Jim Dandy. When Mrs. Prettyman reached home later in the day she decided that the new "buttons" must be called James. And so he was called on formal occasions, but with the children at least Jim Dandy stuck.
In a few days the new boy began to feel at home, and then set about justifying his worthiness of the distinguished name he had assumed. The first time he was sent down-town he came back in such a hurry that it seemed incredible that he could have done his errand. The next time he staid longer, and the third time—that was after he had been in service a week—he staid half a day. To one of the children he confessed that he had spent all his time in looking in the shop-windows. Hearing this, I felt a sympathy for Jim Dandy, for I waste much of my own time in that same occupation. But the shop-windows of this little Southern city seemed shabby and sorry to me after New York and Paris, and I felt sorry for Jim Dandy that such cheap splendors should make him forget his duty.
The fourth time Jim Dandy was sent into town he was told that he must not loiter on the way, but be back in a hurry. And, sure enough, he did not stay long. In less than an hour he was back. But he was not the smart-looking "buttons" who had started out shortly before. His clothes were muddy, his coat was slit in the back, his cap was gone, and there was blood on one of his cheeks. In appearance he looked sheepish and crestfallen. "Jim Dandy has had a licking," I said to myself, for I felt sure that some of the negro lads in town, envious of his whole clothes, had given the country boy a beating for revenge and for the fun of the thing. To inquiries Jim Dandy could make no intelligible reply. He went to the back of the house and sat on the kitchen steps. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and his great eyes were filled with trouble. Aunt Mandy, the cook, evidently diagnosed Jim Dandy's trouble as I had done, and she was voluble in her abuse of him for not "'tending to his own bizness."
It had not been long, however, before there was an explanation of Jim Dandy's adventure. The Mayor of the town called at Mr. Prettyman's to ask for the boy. As the Mayor was also a magistrate, we were afraid Jim Dandy must have done something very dreadful. This is what the Mayor said Jim had done:
A pony phaeton with four children in it was driving through Main Street. A trolley-car was approaching, and the pony took fright and became unmanageable, backing the phaeton on to the track. Jim was passing on his errand. Seeing the danger, he got behind the phaeton, and pushed it and the pony from the track. He was not so fortunate, for the fender of the car caught him and rolled him over and over in the mud until the car was stopped. This was how Jim Dandy's first suit of livery came to be spoiled. We were proud of Jim, and spoke to him as kindly as possible; but he was rather a sulky youth till his new suit of clothes arrived—a suit paid for, by-the-way, by the Mayor himself, for it was his children that Jim had saved from the trolley-car.