read it out loud twice, once
for each ear: 'Unhurt, Sweetheart, and homeward bound--Bill.' Can you
beat it? Five cents a word!"

"Jimmie, wasn't you glad to carry her a message like that?"

"It's a paying business, ma, if you're lucky enough to deal only in good
news."

A chair squealed on its castors, a patch of light sprang through the
transom, and the chocolate-ocher bedroom and its chocolate-ocher
furniture emerged into a chocolate-ocher half-light.

"Jimmie?"

"Huh?"

"I'm--I wish--Oh, nothin'!"

"Ain't you feelin' right, in there, ma?"

"Yes, Jimmie; but--but come in and talk to your old mother awhile, my
boy."

"Surest thing you know! Say, these are some sandwiches! You must 'a'
struck pay-dirt in your sardine-mine, ma."

"They're for her gen'l'man friend, Jimmie."

The door flung open and threw an island of light pat on the bed. In the
gauzy stream the face on the pillow, with the skin drawn over the cheeks
tight as a vellum on a snare-drum, was vague as a head by Carriere after
he had begun to paint through the sad film of his growing blindness.

"Jimmie, my boy!"

"Hello, ma!"

"Ain't your cheeks cold, though, Jimmie? It's right sharp out, ain't it?
And Essie in her thin coat! You--you're a little late to-night, ain't
you, Jimmie?"

He drew his loose-jointed figure up from over the bedside; and his
features, half-formed as a sculptor's head just emerging from the
marble, took on the easy petulance of youth, and he wiped the moist
lips' print off his downy cheek with the back of his hand.

"Ah, there you go again! You been layin' here frettin' and countin' the
minutes again, ain't you? Gee, it makes a fellow sore when he just can't
get home no sooner!"

"No, no, Jimmie; I been layin' here sleepin' sound ever since I went to
bed. I woke up for the first time just now. I'm all right, Jimmie,
only--only--"

"Honest, ma, you ought to ask the company to put me in short-pants
uniform, day duty, carrying telegrams of the day's catechism to
Sunday-school classes."

"I--Don't fuss at me, Jimmie! I--I guess I must 'a' had one of them
smothering spells, and I didn't wait up for Essie and Joe to-night. I'm
all right now, Jimmie--all right."

He placed his heavy hand on her brow in half-understanding sympathy.

"Geewhillikins, why don't you tell a fellow? You want some of that black
medicine, ma. You--gee!--you ain't lookin' kinda blue-like round the
gills, are you? Old man Gibbs said we should