"Yes, back to New York. I wants to go to work."
"Have you not enough to do here?"
"No," said Joe, with a chuckle. "It's all play here—no real hard work sich as I's 'customed to."
"It is time you took it easy, Joe," said Phil.
"True nuff, but I's not one of the easy sort. Besides, who knows, Massa Phil, but there may be other chillen—poor sick chillen—waitin' for to hear my fiddle an' be comforted?"
Phil looked up hastily; a bright look of gratitude and love came into his eyes.
Just then Miss Schuyler appeared, with a glass jar of jelly in her hand; the maid was following with a tray full.
"Joe wants to go to the city, Aunt Rachel," said Phil.
"I dare say," was the ready response. "He wants a little gossip over the kitchen fires, and he wants this nice jar of jelly for his bread and butter when he has company to tea; and as we all are going home next week, he may as well wait for the rest of us."
"Aunt Rachel!" said Phil, in dismay. Going home to the city seemed like going back to poverty, and illness, and the garret room he so well remembered.