Terry studied his shoes intently for a moment. At last: “Wanted to see choo-choos,” he answered. “Listen to me, Terry. Don’t you ever come around the choo-choos again without somebody’s with you. If you ever do I’ll whale you, kid. Remember that. Now go along with the gentleman and be a good boy.” Wayne carried Terry until they were across the tracks and then the child demanded to be set down. “You don’t carry Terry like daddy does,” he complained. “Want to walk?” So they went the rest of the way hand in hand, Terry, now most communicative, talking incessantly. Wayne had a very hazy idea as to the location of Monmouth Street and Terry’s directions were difficult to follow, so he had to ask his way several times. But he found the house eventually, easily identifying it by the sun-parlor which stood out at one end of a tiny front porch like a sore thumb. Mrs. Mason proved to be a comely, smiling-faced woman apparently some years Jim’s senior. Terry, she explained, as she wiped her hands on her apron in the back doorway, had been turned out to play in the yard, and he was a bad boy to run away like that. “You might have been killed,” she told the child severely, “and the Lord only knows why you wasn’t. Thank you, sir, for bringin’ him back, and I hope he was no trouble to you.” “Not a bit, Mrs. Mason. He behaved beautifully. Good-bye, Terry. Be a good boy now and don’t run off again.” “Good-bye,” answered Terry, politely but indifferently. “I got a hen, I have, an’ she’s going to have a lot of little chickens pretty soon. Want to see her?” “Not today, Terry, thanks,” laughed Wayne. “Maybe I’ll come and see her after the chickens are hatched.” “All right. Mama, can I have some bread and sugar?” Wayne left while that question was being debated and hurried off uptown, first to tell June the wonderful news and then to purchase that black jumper. There was a new quality in the April sunshine now and Wayne discovered for the first time that Medfield was an attractive place after all. The folks he passed on the street looked friendly, the clanging of the trolley car gongs fell pleasantly on his ear; in short, the world had quite changed since early morning and was now a cheerful, hopeful place, filled with sunshine and bustle and ambition. Wayne’s spirits soared like the billowing white clouds of steam above the buildings and he whistled a gay little tune as he went along. CHAPTER IX BIG TOM MAKES AN OFFER He spent the afternoon, after his return to “Carhurst,” in planting his garden and had the seeds all in by the time June came. He displayed the result proudly. Every row was marked with a little stick on which was perched the empty seed packet like a white nightcap. June admired flatteringly and then, for so it always happens, criticised. “Seems to me like you ought to put them rows ’tother way roun’, Mas’ Wayne, ’cause the sun goin’ to shine this yere way. Back home they always set the rows with the sun.”