“I’ve been at it, all day, mother. I’ve found people,—found ’em easy,—that’ll let us have things to sell. Don’t you see? You own your store, and you’ve cash to start with, and you don’t pay rent or clerk hire. Your credit’s good and they want to see you about it.”
“Rodney!” she exclaimed. “Of course we can! But what made you think of it?”
“It was Jim,” said Rodney. “I thought if he could find a way out, I could.”
“I won’t go out to work any more——” and Mrs. Nelson almost cried as she and her boy went over the particulars of it and she saw how easy it would be.
There were days and days, after that, during which nothing exciting happened, but in each of which a great deal of work was done. Aunt Betty Bronson, in her farmhouse home, passed them in a state of half nervous expectation. There was a kind of daily disappointment, too, until one broad, bright noon when she met Uncle John, at the door, with a face that was almost blazing.
“Letter from Jim!” she exclaimed. “He’s safe and they can’t catch him.”
“Stop right there, Betty,” he said. “I don’t want to know where he is. I’m glad he’s doing well. Don’t say any more, now.”
“I won’t, then,” she replied, but it was hard to keep her word.
As for Uncle John, there was something heavy on his mind, for he sat down to his dinner with a face that looked very much as if he were about to be taken sick.
“I know it kind o’ hurts him,” thought Aunt Betty, “but he ought never to have been so hard on Jim about that money. I never believed Jim took it!”