“Sure,” said the boy decidedly.
When he had once capitulated Bud stood firm, wholeheartedly backing his decision.
“I just don’t seem able to grasp it all,” said Nance happily, “it seems like our whole life has changed overnight. There is light where darkness was, hope again where I’d about given it up—and now we’ll never have to give up Sonny.”
“That’s so!” cried Mrs. Allison, “an’ I hadn’t thought of that. Never seemed like we would any way—bless him.”
“Me?” asked a fresh little voice from the doorway, and the child stood there, rumple-headed, in his small night-gown made from flour-sacks. The faded red lettering still stood frankly out across his diminutive stomach.
“Yes—you,” said Nance, “come here to your own Nance.”
Sonny sidled in, holding up the hindering garment with one hand, the other shut over some small article.
As Nance lifted him to her lap he laid this on the table’s edge.
“See,” he said, “the pretty lady. She was in a bundle on your bed—where’d you get her, Nance?”
And Nance Allison looked down into the pictured face of—Cattle Kate Cathrew.