Allen sat by the bed and held the hand of his foster-mother; and Chris moved about the room, heating water for a little pot of tea. And so it was Chris who first saw the child. He was sitting at the end of the wood box, on the floor before the oven—that little stray boy whom Sarah Ernestine had picked up as she had once picked up Allen. He looked up at Christopha with big, soft eyes, naïve as the first bird. Almost before she knew that she meant to do so, Chris stooped, with a wondering word, and took him in her arms. He clung to her and she sat in the rocking chair near the window where stood Jacob's carnation plant. And she tried both to look at the child and to love him, at the same time.
"See, Allen," she said, "this little boy!"
The child looked over his shoulder at Allen, his little arms leaning on Christopha's breast. And very likely because he had felt strange and lonely and now was taken some account of, he suddenly and beautifully smiled, and you would have loved him the more for the way he did that.
The woman, lying with closed eyes, understood and remembered.
"Allen," she said, "that's little John. You find him—a home somewheres. If you can...."
"Why, yes, mother, we'll do that. We can do that, I guess. Don't you worry any about him," said Allen.
"He's all alone. I donno his name, even.... But you be good to him, Allen, will you?" she said restlessly. "I found him somewheres."
"Like me," Allen said.
She shook her head feebly.