“Say,” he cried, waving the roller, “Josh’s goin’ to teach me how to milk, and you won’t have to hire him any more. I kin do everything’s well as not, can’t I, Josh?” But Joshua had, fortunately, gone and did not hear this threat to usurp his position. “Well, you do have orful good meals,” he said, sitting down opposite Miss Lucinda’s handsome, severe figure. “I’m orful hungry, but I did have the dandiest time to-day you ever heard of. The potatoes didn’t roast very well, but the fire burned like fun. My Jiminy—” “James!” called Miss Lucinda in an awful voice. James opened his innocent eyes and looked at her, then fell to eating with renewed vigor, and it was some time before he mustered courage to finish his recital. But when he came out into the kitchen and watched her moving back and forth in the dusky light, Miss Lucinda somehow felt herself moved to open conversation. “You didn’t eat so very much for supper, James.” “No, marm,” James answered promptly. “Don’t you remember them potatoes? I was a-payin’ for ’em.” “Mercy on us!” cried Miss Lucinda, and she went to the dining-room and brought from the table the currant pie, of which the boy, to Miss Lucinda’s amazement, had eaten only two pieces. He ate the third generous slice she gave him, and again sat still, watching her with round, admiring eyes as she moved about. “I think it’s about time for you to go to bed now, James,” his guardian said presently, and James rose promptly. “Would you mind calling me Jim? It sounds kinder homesick to be called James,” he said, with sudden wistfulness engendered, even in his boyish spirit, by the shadows and the newness of the place. “Good-night, Jim,” Miss Lucinda responded; but Jim still stood looking at her with serious eyes. “My aunt useter kiss me good-night. You don’t exactly look like the kissin’ kind, and I ain’t neither, but—but I didn’t know, seein’ ’s you’re so good to me, but—p’r’aps”—he flushed and shifted himself from one foot to the other. Miss Lucinda flushed, too, and looked greatly embarrassed, but hers was no stony heart to refuse so gallant a suitor; she stooped and kissed him awkwardly and flutteringly somewhere upon his forehead or hair; but when she would have felt her duty over, he suddenly seized her in an impetuous hug. He went upstairs quickly, and Miss Lucinda sat down in her little rocking-chair with hot, red cheeks, and something deeper than embarrassment brought a new light into her clear eyes. “I think he tries hard to be a good boy,” Miss Lucinda said to the minister when he next called, “but he does a great many things that are rather startling, and now and then he says something he oughtn’t to.” “Yes?” the minister said, in kindly interest.