He looked surly, affronted for a moment. He shook the light hand from his own. It fell upon his knee where Rosamond leaned her weight upon it. There was a subtle change on his face. In his old debonair way he drawled, “Yes, I kin feel. What’s this?”—he laid his hand upon her hair—“Flax, I reckon. Hyar, Sis’ Jemimy, hyar’s that flax ye war goin’ ter hackle. Mus’ I han’ it over ter ye?” He made a feint of lifting her by her hair, and she sank down beside him, screaming with laughter till the rafters rang. Aunt Jemima had taken the sock from her knitting needles and was swiftly putting on the stitches for newly projected work. “Lemme medjure ye fur a stockin’,” she said, reaching out for the little girl. “Look at the stitches this child’s stockin’ will take! The fatness of her is s’prisin’. An’ ef Ab air willin’,” she continued, “I want Rosamondy ter bide hyar till I can knit her a couple o’ pair o’ stockin’s an’ mend up her clothes.” “I dunno ’bout’n that,” said Jerry Binwell. He had seated himself in a chair, his garments dripping with rain, and small puddles forming from them on the floor. “I dunno ez we-uns kin bide enny arter the rain’s over.” The capable aunt Jemima cast upon him a glance which seemed to contrast his limp, forlorn, and ineffective personality with her own stalwart moral value. “I ain’t talkin’ ter you-uns, Jerry, nor thinkin’ ’bout ye, nuther,” she remarked slightingly. “I done said my say,” she continued after the manner of a proclamation. “That thar child air goin’ ter bide hyar till I fix her clothes comfortable—ef it takes me a year.” Then with a recollection of her brother’s grievance she again added, “Ef Ab’s willin’.” The stocking was already showing a ribbed top of an admirable circumference. Aunt Jemima evidently felt a pride in its proportions which was hardly decorous. Jerry made no reply. He looked disconsolately at the fire from under the brim of his rain-soaked hat, that now and then contributed a drop to his cheek, which thus bore a tearful aspect. Presently he broke the silence, speaking in a strained rasping voice. “Ef I hed knowed ez Ab held sech a pack o’ old gredges ag’in me I wouldn’t kem nigh hyar,”—he glanced at the stalwart soldierly form bending to the little laughing maiden. “Ab dunno what I tole the en’my—he warn’t thar. I never tole the en’my nuthin’. An’ ennybody ez be captured kin be accused o’ desertin’—ef folks air so minded. I never deserted, nuther. An’ sech gredges ez Ab hev got,” he continued, complainingly, “air fur what I done, an’ what I ain’t done whenst I war nuthin’ but a boy.” Ab turned his imperious youthful face toward him. “Ye hesh up!” he said. “Thar ain’t no truce hyar fur you-uns.”