Jim,
out of breath and panting with the exertion of the climb, was being
roughly dusted by an undoubted Martha when Christopher reached the
topmost landing. She was stouter than of yore, and her hair was no
longer done up in iron curlers as of old, also a baby, younger than
Jim, was crawling out of the room on the right. But it was Martha
Sartin, and Christopher advanced a friendly hand.

Mrs. Sartin gazed at the apparition with blank amazement. She could
connect the tall, pleasant-faced boy in his spotless suit and straw
hat with nothing in her memory. He did not look as if he could belong
to the theatre at which she was a dresser, but it seemed the only
solution.

"Are you come from Miss Vassour?" she asked doubtfully.

"Don't you know me, Mrs. Sartin?"

"Know ye? No. How should I?"

"I'm Jim Hibbault."

"Garn!"

"Yes, I am really." Poor Christopher began to feel embarrassed and a
little disappointed.

He _was_ Jim Hibbault at that moment and he felt queerly lonely and
stranded.

Martha pulled down her sleeves and went to the inner door.

"Jessie, come out 'ere," she screamed.

Christopher felt his heart go thump. He had almost forgotten Jessie,
yet Jessie had been more to him than Martha in other days. It was
Jessie who had taken him for walks, carried him up the steep stairs on
her back, shared sweets with him, cuffed her brother Sam when they
fought, and had finally taken little Jim Hibbault back to his mother
when the great clock in the distance struck six,--Jessie, who at
eleven had been a complete little mother and was at sixteen a tall,
lanky, untidy girl who had inherited the curling pins of her mother
and whose good-natured, not ill-looking face was not improved
thereby.

She came to the doorway and stood looking over her mother's arm at
Christopher.

"Ever seed 'im afore?" demanded Mrs. Sartin.

"Well I never, if it ain't Jimmy!" cried Jessie, beaming, and
Christopher could have embraced her if it were in accordance with the
custom of his years, and he felt less inclined to bolt down the stairs
out of reach of his adventure.

Neither of the two women expressed any pleasure at his appearance.
Mrs. Sartin accepted her daughter's recognition of their visitor as
sufficient evidence it was not a hoax, and asked Christopher in.

The room, though the window was open, smelt just as stuffy as of old,
and a familiar litter of toys and odds and ends strewed the floor.
Christopher missed the big