"I lost our'n," ventured Pony. "It don't seem fair that Milo has to get
wet because I'm so bad about losing things, does it?" And he smiled
engagingly up into the tall man's face--Johnnie's own eyes,
large-pupilled, black-lashed, full of laughter in their clear depths.
Gray Stoddard stared down at them silently for a moment. Then he pushed
the handle of his umbrella into the boy's grimy little hand.
"See how long you can keep that one," he said kindly. "It's marked on
the handle with my name; and maybe if you lost it somebody might bring
it back to you."
Johnnie had turned away and faltered on a few paces in a daze of
humiliation and misery.
"Sis' Johnnie--oh, Sis' Johnnie!" Pony called after her, flourishing the
umbrella. "Look what Mr. Stoddard give Milo and me." Then, in sudden
consternation as Milo caught his elbow, he whirled and offered voluble
thanks. "I'm a goin' to earn a whole lot of money and pay back the
trouble I am to my folks," he confided to Gray, hastily. "I didn't know
I was such a bad feller till I came down to the Settlement. Looks like I
cain't noways behave. But I'm goin' to earn a big heap of money, an' buy
things for Milo an' maw an' the girls. Only now they take all I can earn
away from me."
There was a warning call from Johnnie, ahead in the dusk somewhere; and
the little fellow scuttled away toward the Victory and a night of work.
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