They had gotten his arms into and his chest covered with a finely embroidered, pale-blue silk shirt, with soft, white tie at the throat.  Among the many changes that had taken place during his absence, the fact that Freckles was most attractive and barely escaped being handsome remained almost unnoticed by the Boss, so great was his astonishment at seeing both cuffs turned back and the right arm in view.  Freckles was using the maimed arm that previously he always had hidden.

“Oh Lord, sir, but I’m glad to see you!” cried Freckles, almost rolling from the bed as he reached toward McLean.  “Tell me quick, is the Angel well and happy?  Can me Little Chicken spread six feet of wing and sail to his mother?  How’s me new father, the Bird Woman, Duncans, and Nellie—­darling little high-stepping Nelie?  Me Aunt Alice is going to choose the hat just as soon as I’m mended enough to be going with her.  How are all the gang?  Have they found any more good trees?  I’ve been thinking a lot, sir.  I believe I can find others near that last one.  Me Aunt Alice thinks maybe I can, and Uncle Terence says it’s likely.  Golly, but they’re nice, ilegant people.  I tell you I’m proud to be same blood with them!  Come closer, quick!  I was going to do this yesterday, and somehow I just felt that you’d surely be coming today and I waited.  I’m selecting the Angel’s ring stone.  The ring she ordered for me is finished and they sent it to keep me company.  See?  It’s an emerald—­just me color, Lord O’More says.”

Freckles flourished his hand.

“Ain’t that fine?  Never took so much comfort with anything in me life.  Every color of the old swamp is in it.  I asked the Angel to have a little shamrock leaf cut on it, so every time I saw it I’d be thinking of the ‘love, truth, and valor’ of that song she was teaching me.  Ain’t that a beautiful song?  Some of these days I’m going to make it echo.  I’m a little afraid to be doing it with me voice yet, but me heart’s tuning away on it every blessed hour.  Will you be looking at these now?”

Freckles tilted a tray of unset stones from Peacock’s that would have ransomed several valuable kings.  He held them toward McLean, stirring them with his right arm.

“I tell you I’m glad to see you, sir” he said.  “I tried to tell me uncle what I wanted, but this ain’t for him to be mixed up in, anyway, and I don’t think I made it clear to him.  I couldn’t seem to say the words I wanted.  I can be telling you, sir.”

McLean’s heart began to thump as a lover’s.

“Go on, Freckles,” he said assuringly.

“It’s this,” said Freckles.  “I told him that I would pay only three hundred dollars for the Angel’s stone.  I’m thinking that with what he has laid up for me, and the bigness of things that the Angel did for me, it seems like a stingy little sum to him.  I know he thinks I should be giving much more, but I feel as if I just had to be buying that stone with money