You--why, Uncle Pros, you liked him more
than any one. He could get you to eat when you wouldn't take a spoonful
from anybody else. You must remember him--you can't have forgot Mr.
Stoddard."
Pros thrust out a long, lean arm, and fingered the sleeve upon it.
"Nor my own clothes, I reckon," he assented with a sort of rueful
testiness; "but to the best of my knowin' and believin', I never in my
life before saw this shirt I'm wearin'--every garment I've got on is a
plumb stranger to me, Johnnie. Ye say I played checkers with him--and--"
"Uncle Pros, you used to talk to him by the hour, when you didn't know
me at all," Johnnie told him chokingly. "I would get afraid that you
asked too much of him, but he'd leave anything to come and sit with you
when you were bad. He's got the kindest heart of anybody I ever knew."
The old man's slow, thoughtful gaze was raised a moment to her eloquent,
flushed face, and then dropped considerately to the path.
"An' ye tell me he's one of the rich mill owners? Mr. Gray Stoddard?
That's one name you've never named in your letters. What cause have you
to think that Shade wished the man ill?"
Slowly Johnnie's eyes filled with tears. "Why, what Shade said himself.
He was--"
"Jealous of him, I reckon," supplied the old man.
Johnnie nodded. It was no time for evasions.
"He had no call to be," she repeated.
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