it was those hot tears falling on his face, tears that were not his own, that called him back to his boy senses and brought to an end the first crying spell he remembered since he was six years old when Aunt Jane sneered at him and called him a cry-baby, that time he had cut his foot on a scythe. He had been a self-contained, hard, bad, little man ever since till now, when all the foundations of his being seemed shaken with this unexpected sympathy from one whom he had hitherto ranked among his enemies.
His sobs stopped as suddenly as they had begun and for some time he lay still in her arms, his head pressed against her shoulder where she had drawn it, his breath coming hot and quick against her face.
"Can't you tell me what's the matter? Is't anythin' special?" asked the girl gently. One would scarcely have known Miranda's voice. All the hardness and sharpness and mirth were gone. There was only gentleness and tenderness, and a deep understanding. "Course I know 'tain't altogether pleasant hevin' a stranger—especially ef she's one you've known afore an' ain't fond of —”
"I hate her! " came with sudden fierce vehemence from the lips of the boy. There was a catch in his throat, hut his lips were set and no more tears were allowed to come.
"Well, 'course that ain't the way you're expected t' feel, but I onderstand, and I guess they wouldn't enny of 'em do much better in your place. I never did admire her much myself, so I ken see how you look at it."
"I hate her!" reiterated the boy again, but this time not so fiercely. "I hate her and I won't let her be my mother, ever! Say, why didn't you be it?"
The question was balm and pride to the heart of Miranda. She put her arms the closer around the lonely boy and rocked him gently back and forth, and then smoothed his hair back from his hot dirty fore-head. The marvel was he let her do it and did not squirm away.
"Why didn't I? Bless him! Well, I didn't think I'd like it enny better'n you do her. B'sides, ef I had, you'd a hated me then."
The boy looked at her steadily through the twilight as though he were turning it over in his mind and then suddenly broke into a shy smile.
"Mebbe I would," he said with honest eyes searching her face, and then half shamefaced, he added shyly:"But anyhow I like you now."
A wild sweet rush of emotion flooded Miranda's soul. Not since she left her unloved, unloving grandmother Heath who lived next door, and came to live with David and Marcia Spafford receiving wages, doing honest work in return, and finding a real home, had such sweet surprise and joy come to her. Sweeter even than the little cherished Rose's kisses was this shy, veiled admiration of the man-child whose lonely life she seemed somehow strangely to understand. All at once she seemed to know how and why he had got the name of being a bad boy, and her heart went out to him as to a kindred spirit. She had seen the soul of him looking out of his beautiful brown eyes in the dusk at her, and she knew he was not all bad, and that it had mostly been the fault of other people when he had really done wrong.
Miranda's arms in their warm pressure answered the boy's words, and she stooped again and laid her lips on his forehead lingeringly, albeit as shyly as a boy might have done it. Miranda was not one to show deep emotion and she was more stirred than ever before.
"Well, I guess we sort o' b'long to each other somehow. Ennyhow we'll be friends. Say, didn't you tear your cloes when you went up that hick'ry?"
The child in her arms suddenly straightened up and became the boy with mischief in his eyes and a knowing tilt to his handsome head.
"Say, did you see me go up that tree?"
"No, but I saw you gone; and I saw Sammy's eyes lookin' up, an' I saw the hick'ry movin' some, so I calc’lated you was up there, all right."
"An' you won't tell?" doubtfully.
"Course I won't tell. It's none o' my business, an' b'sides I could see you wasn't enjoyin' yerse'f to the weddin'. What's more, I'll mend them cloes. There ain't no reason fer M'ria Bent as was, to come inspectin' you yet a whiles. You kin shin up the kitchen roof, can't yeh, to my winder, an' you take off them rips an' tears an' bop into my bed? I'll come up an' mend yeh so's she won't know. Then you ken shin up a tree to yer own winder t' hum an' go to bed, an' like's not she'll never notice them does till yer Aunt Jane's gone, an' she'll think they been tore an' mended sometime back, an' she ain't got no call to throw 'ern up to yeh. Hed yer supper?"
"Naw. Don't want any."
"That's all right. I’ll bring you up some caraway cookies. You like 'em don't yeh? Er hev yeh et too much weddin' cake?"
"Didn't touch their old wedding cake," said the boy sulkily.
*"Boy, didn't you go home 'tall since you was in the hick'ry? Wall, I swan! To think you'd miss the reception with all them good things to eat! You must a felt pretty bad. Never mind you, honey. You do's I tell yeh. Just shin right up that roof. Here, eat them raspberries first, they ain't many but they'll stay yeh. I got some fried chicken left over. Don't you worry. Now, let's see you get up there."
Miranda helped Nate from the back kitchen window to mount to the roof and saw him climb lightly and gleefully in at her window, then she bustled in to put supper on the table. Mr. David was not home yet when everything was ready, so with a glass of milk, a plate of bread, jelly, and chicken, and another of cookies she slipped up the back stairs to her small boy, and found him quite contentedly awaiting her coming, his eyes shining a welcome to her through the gathering darkness of the room, as he might have done to any pal in a youthful conspiracy.
"I've got a boarder," she explained grimly a few minutes afterward to the astonished Mrs. Marcia, coming downstairs with her lighted candle, a small pair of trousers and a jacket over her arm.
"A boarder!" Mrs. Marcia had learned to expect the unusual from Miranda, but this was out of the ordinary even for Miranda, at least without permission.
"Yes, you ken take it off my wages. I don't guess he'll remain more'n an hour or so, leastways I'll try to get him off soon fer his own sake. It's that poor little peaked Nate Whitney, Mrs. Marcia. He's all broke up over hevin' that broomstick of a M'ria Bent fer his mother, an' seem' as I sorta shirked the job myself I thought 'twas only decent I should chirk him up a bit. He was out behind the pieplant cryin' like his heart would break, an' he ast me, why didn't I be his mother, 'at he hated her, an' he was all tore up with climbin' trees to get out of sight, so I laid out to mend him up a little 'fore he goes home. I know M’ria Bent. I went to school to her one year 'fore I quit, an' she's a tartar! It ain't reasonable fer him to start in with her the first day all tore up. She'd get him at a disadvantage. Ain't you got a patch would do to put under this tear, Mrs. Marcia? I took him up some supper. I knowed you wouldn't care, an' I want you should take it off my wages. Yes, that's right. I’ll feel better about it ef you do, then I could do it agin ef the notion should take me I owe a little sumpin' to that boy fer my present state of freedom an' independence, an' I kinda take a likin' to him when he's cryin' you know. After all, I do’ no's'e was ever so awful bad."
Mrs. Marcia laid a tender understanding touch on her handmaiden's arm, and with a smile in the dimple by the off-corner of her mouth, and a tear in the eye that Miranda could not see, went to get the patch.
Young Nathan inside of two hours departed by the way of the roof, washed and combed, mended and pressed, as well as Aunt Jane could have done it; but with more than he had had for years, a heart that was almost comforted. He felt that now he had at least one friend in the world who understood him, and meditated as he slid down the kitchen-shed roof, whether it might not be practicable for him to grow up fast and marry Miranda so no one else would carry her off. By the time he had scaled his own kitchen
