“Dear Lem,” he read. “I'm going on from here because the Jews have the junk business all tied up here from what I can see, and it's no place for me. No telling where I 'll land up at. You better go back to your Aunt Susan and wait until I send for you. Maybe it won't be as long as it looks like now.” “And the name? The name?” cried Shuder. “Redding; it looks like Henry Redding, or something like that.” “Well, I won't go back,” said Lem. “I don't care what he says. I won't go back to that old aunt. I don't care if I starve to death, I won't go back to her.” Shuder had heard about Miss Susan on the way down from Riverbank, for Lem had been full of a sense of injustice and had had to talk to some one about it or burst. Lem and his troubles were none of Shuder's affair, but, on the other hand, Saint Harvey and the “paper” were, and Lem was Shuder's only link with Saint Harvey now. “Do I ask you to go back by her, Lem'vel?” Shuder demanded. “No! But why should you vorry? Ain't I got two houses? Ain't I got two chunkyards? Ain't I got plenty room? I esk you, come by me awhile, Lem'vel.” “Say, what you mean?” Lem asked. “You want me to go an' live at your house?” “Sure!” said Shuder. Lem looked at the Jew. “All right,” he said. “Until I get a word from pop. I bet you don't have so many dishes to wash, anyway.” Shuder raised a hand. “Listen! Listen, Lem'vel!” he said solemnly. “I gif you my word you should n't wash even your face if you don't want to.” “All right, I'll come,” said Lem. CHAPTER XXIII To his very considerable surprise, Lem did not find residing with the Shuders a painful experience. Rosa, for all her strange ways of doing things and her incomprehensible objection to chickens killed in any but a certain way, was a better cook than Saint Harvey, and knew how to prepare things that a boy's appetite found delicious. Lem had to sleep in the lean-to, on an old iron cot set among the piles of junk, but it was summer and hot and he enjoyed that. Shuder made him work, but it was work that Lem liked; the kind he had always done for his father, and he had only about half as much of it to do as his father had made him do. He enjoyed helping with the horse, harnessing and unharnessing it. There was only one thing Lem refused to do--he would not go out of the junkyard. For a week he kept under close cover. Then, one night, he stole away, and, keeping in the alley shadows, made his way to Miss Susan's back gate. He did not risk the rusty hinges creaking, but climbed the fence, and dodged to the shadow of the house. Miss Susan was in the kitchen. Lem went around the house. On the porch Lorna sat, on one of the steps as usual, and Henrietta and Johnnie Alberson had chairs. It was Henrietta Lem wanted. He seated himself under the drooping spirea bushes that edged the porch, and waited. Presently Lorna went up.