seat. "Dere's de fence buildin' an' breakin'
de new groun', and de seedin'."

"True enough! Oh, we shall come out all right, now, thanks to you,
Joe."

And Jessie spoke with the happy little laugh that we had not heard for
a long, long time.

CHAPTER XXII

AN OPEN WINDOW

It was, apart from the pecuniary relief that his coming had brought
us, a great satisfaction to have old Joe again with us. Remembering
his habit of not speaking until he was, as he sometimes expressed it,
"plumb ready," we forbore to ask any more questions until he had
finished his supper, and smoked his pipe afterward. Smoking is a bad
habit, I know, but I am afraid that there are few good habits from
which people derive more comfort than fell to Joe when he was puffing
contentedly away at his old clay pipe. After a long interval of
blissful enjoyment he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, pocketed it,
and then remarked, rather wistfully, apparently to the fire as much as
to either of us: "I reckons he's fas' asleep, shore' nuff!" "He" meant
Ralph, of course.

"Yes," Jessie said, "he's been asleep ever since a little while before
dark."

"Yo' reckons hit gwine fur 'sturb him, jess fur me ter tek' a look at
him, honey?"

"Surely not, Joe." Accordingly I took up a lamp, and stepped with it
into the next room--the sitting-room, in which Ralph's crib was
stationed. The crib stood close to the window, which was open. I was
surprised that Jessie had left it so, knowing, as she did, that Ralph
caught cold with painful facility. Joe cast a disapproving look at the
opening as we stood by the crib side, but, fearful of awakening the
little sleeper, he said nothing. All children are lovely in their
sleep, but as I held the lamp aloft, while we admiringly surveyed this
one, I think the same idea occurred to us both--that never was there
one more beautiful than our Ralph. Joe, cautiously advancing a horny
fore-finger, softly touched the moist, dimpled little hand that lay
relaxed outside the coverlet. Then he drew the coverlet a little
closer over the baby sleeper's shoulders, and, noiselessly closing the
window, turned away with a sigh that belonged, I felt, not to Ralph,
but to some one whom he seemed to the old man to resemble.

When we were again in the kitchen, he said decidedly: "I 'clar fo'
hit, Miss Jessie--fo' hit mus' 'a' been yo, w'at done hit; fo' yo'
said Miss Leslie done been gone--I'se 'sprised fur to see yo'
a-puttin' dat chil