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With eyes now burning bright, he scanned the face of the gray old miner and begged for "Bruvver Jim." "This is Bruvver Jim," the man assured him repeatedly. "What does baby want old Jim to do?" "Bruv-ver Jim," came the half-sobbed little answer. "Bruv-ver Jim." Jim took him up and held him fast in his arms. The weary little mind had gone to some tragic baby past.
Jim had told him of Christmas by the hour all the beauty of the story, so old, so appealing to the race of man, who yearns towards everything affording a brightness of hope and a faith in anything human. "What would little Skeezucks like for his Christmas?" the man inquired, for the twentieth time. The little fellow pressed closer against him, in baby shyness and slowly answered: "Bruv-ver Jim."
"What would little Skeezucks like?" For the very first time since his coming to the camp the little fellow's brown eyes abruptly filled with tears. His tiny lip began to tremble. "Bruv-ver Jim," he said, and, leaning against the rough old coat of the miner, he cried in his silent way of passionate longing, far too deep in his childish nature for the man to comprehend.
Shyly the tiny man leaned back on the arm he felt he knew, and gravely, to the utter astonishment of the big, rough men, in his sweet baby utterance, he said: "Bruv-ver Jim." A roar of laughter instantly followed, giving the youngster a start that almost shook him from his seat. "By jinks!" said Keno. "That's all right. You bet he knows." But the Sunday-school programme was not again attempted.
"No-body wants me anywhere," he said. The heart in old Jim was breaking. He crooned a hundred tender declarations of his foster-parenthood, of his care, of his wish to be a comfort and a "pard." But something of the fever now had come between the tiny ears and any voice of tenderness. "Bruv-ver Jim; Bruv-ver Jim," the little fellow called, time and time again.
There little Carson stretched his tiny arms across the panels in baby appeal. "Bruv-ver Jim," he begged. "Bruv-ver Jim." Then, at last, the gray old miner understood the whole significance of the baby words.
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