hadn’t come of it, she judged she better put in her time being grateful we was alive and well and she had us still, stead of fretting over what was past and done.

So then she kissed me, and patted me on the head, and dropped into a kind of a brown-study; and pretty soon jumps up, and says:

“Why, lawsamercy, it’s most night, and Sid not come yet! What has become of that boy?”

I see my chance; so I skips up and says:

“I’ll run right up to town and get him,” I says.

“No you won’t,” she says. “You’ll stay right wher’ you are; one’s enough to be lost at a time. If he ain’t here to supper, your uncle ’ll go.”