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"It's all right, little Skeezucks," said Jim to the timid little pilgrim, who was clinging to his collar with all the strength of a baby's new confidence and hope. "Did you think old brother Jim was lost? Did you want to go home and get some bread and milk?" "He ain't a bit hungry. He didn't want nuthin' to eat," said Miss Doc, in self-defence.
When little Skeezucks starts it off I reckon it's goin' to make me a boy again, goin' in swimmin' and eatin' bread-and-molasses." For the next few days, however, Jim and the others were content to see the signs of returning baby strength that came to little Skeezucks.
They found the timid little man seated, with his doll, on the floor, from which he watched them gravely, in his baby way. Half the honors of receiving the groups and showing off the quaint little Skeezucks were assumed by Keno, with a grace that might have been easy had he not been obliged to pull down his shirt-sleeves with such exasperating frequency.
But presently everything was adjusted, and, deserting the carriage, the shop, and everything else, the whole assemblage moved in procession on the home of the Dennihans. A few minutes later little Skeezucks, Jim, and the pup all of them looking from the window of the house saw those three small caps of red, and felt that New-Year's day had really come at last.
As for Skeezucks starving for even so much as the sight of children, hungering beyond expression for the sound of youngster voices, for the laughter and over-bubblings of the little folk with whom by rights he belonged nothing in the way of words will ever tell of the almost overpowering excitement and joy that presently leaped in his lonely little heart. Honesty is the children's policy.
Little Skeezucks, with his back to the slanting fire of small, hard flakes, nestled in comfort on the big, protecting shoulder, where he felt secure against all manner of attack. For two more hours they rode ahead, while the snow came down somewhat thicker. "It can't last," old Jim said, cheerily, to the child and horse and pup. "Just a blowout. Too fierce and sudden to hold."
"I thought, perhaps, if you reckoned little Skeezucks ought to bunk down here in town why I wouldn't mind if you fetched him over to the house. There's plenty of room." "Wal, not to-day I won't," said Jim. "But thank you, Webber, all the same."
"No it doesn't," Stowe agreed. "And yet, it must have been in some such way little Skeezucks came to be among the Injuns," Jim reflected, aloud. Then in a moment he added; "I'm glad you told me, parson. I know now the low-down brute that sent him off with the Piute hunters can't never come to Borealis and take him away." And yet, all through their homely breakfast old Jim was silently thinking.
Even Tintoretto was experiencing ecstasies heretofore unknown in his youthful career. Indeed, no one could have determined by any known system of calculation whether Jim or tiny Skeezucks or the pup most enjoyed the coming of the preacher and his family. Old Jim had certainly never before undergone emotions so deeply stirring.
"We've got to have a rousin' big Christmas fer little Skeezucks, anyhow," suggested Bone. "What sort of a celebration is there that we 'ain't never had in Borealis?" "Church," said Keno, promptly. This caused a silence for a moment. "Guess that's so, but who wants church?" inquired the teamster. "We might git up somethin' worse," said a voice in the crowd. "How?" demanded another.
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