She indulged again in merriment, laughing sweetly at him, and without restraint.

“And I’m sick of what you all keep a-saying to me!” he shouted.  “Just as if I was a baby.”

“Why, Billy, who ever said you were a baby?”

“All of you do.  Honey, and Lin, and you, now, and everybody.  What makes you say ‘that’s nine times, Billy; oh, Billy, that’s ten times,’ if you don’t mean I’m a baby?  And you laugh me off, just like they do, and just like I was a regular baby.  You won’t tell me—­”

“Billy, listen.  Did nobody ever ask you something you did not want to tell them?”

“That’s not a bit the same, because—­because—­because I treat ’em square and because it’s not their business.  But every time I ask anybody ’most anything, they say I’m not old enough to understand; and I’ll be ten soon.  And it is my business when it’s about the kind of a mother I’m agoing to have.  Suppose I quit acting square, an’ told ’em, when they bothered me, they weren’t young enough to understand!  Wish I had.  Guess I will, too, and watch ’em step around.”  For a moment his mind dwelt upon this, and he whistled a revengeful strain.

“Goodness, Billy!” said Jessamine, at the sight of the next stocking.  “The whole heel is scorched off.”

He eyed the ruin with indifference.  “Ah, that was last month when I and Lin shot the bear in the swamp willows.  He made me dry off my legs.  Chuck it away.”

“And spoil the pair?  No, indeed!”

“Mother always chucked ’em, an’ father’d buy new ones till I skipped from home.  Lin kind o’ mends ’em.”

“Does he?” said Jessamine, softly.  And she looked at the photograph.

“Yes.  What made you write him for to let me come and bring my stockin’s and things?”

“Don’t you see, Billy, there is so little work at this station that I’d be looking out of the window all day just the pitiful way you do?”

“Oh!” Billy pondered.  “And so I said to Lin,” he continued, “why didn’t he send down his own clothes, too, an’ let you fix ’em all.  And Honey Wiggin laughed right in his coffee-cup so it all sploshed out.  And the cook he asked me if mother used to mend Lin’s clothes.  But I guess she chucked ’em like she always did father’s and mine.  I was with father, you know, when mother was married to Lin that time.”  He paused again, while his thoughts and fears struggled.  “But Lin says I needn’t ever go back,” he went on, reasoning and confiding to her.  “Lin don’t like mother any more, I guess.”  His pondering grew still deeper, and he looked at Jessamine for some while.  Then his face wakened with a new theory.  “Don’t Lin like you any more?” he inquired.

“Oh,” cried Jessamine, crimsoning, “yes!  Why, he sent you to me!”

“Well, he got hot in camp when I said that about sending his clothes to you.  He quit supper pretty soon, and went away off a walking.  And that’s another time they said I was too young.  But Lin don’t come to see you any more.”