For a week Jim was irregular and unsteady in his habits, when one night, full of gin and pride, he staggered up to a crowd which was surrounding his rival, and said in a loud voice, “James Johnsonham, Junior—­how does that strike you?”

“Any bettah than Isaac Johnson, Junior?” asked some one, slapping the happy Ike on the shoulder as the crowd burst into a loud guffaw.  Jim’s head was sadly bemuddled, and for a time he gazed upon the faces about him in bewilderment.  Then a light broke in upon his mind, and with a “Whoo-ee!” he said, “No!” Ike grinned a defiant grin at him, and led the way to the nearest place where he and his friends might celebrate.

Jim went home to his wife full of a sullen, heavy anger.  “Ike Johnson got a boy at his house, too,” he said, “an’ he done put Junior to his name.”  Martha raised her head from the pillow and hugged her own baby to her breast closer.

“It do beat all,” she made answer airily; “we can’t do a blessed thing but them thaih Johnsons has to follow right in ouah steps.  Anyhow, I don’t believe their baby is no sich healthy lookin’ chile as this one is, bress his little hea’t!  ’Cause I knows Matilda Benson nevah was any too strong.”

She was right; Matilda Benson was not so strong.  The doctor went oftener to Ike’s house than he had gone to Jim’s, and three or four days after an undertaker went in.

They tried to keep the news from Martha’s ears, but somehow it leaked into them, and when Jim came home on that evening she looked into her husband’s face with a strange, new expression.

“Oh, Jim,” she cried weakly, “‘Tildy done gone, an’ me jes’ speakin’ ha’d ‘bout huh a little while ago, an’ that po’ baby lef thaih to die!  Ain’t it awful?”

“Nev’ min’,” said Jim, huskily; “nev’ min’, honey.”  He had seen Ike’s face when the messenger had come for him at the brickyard, and the memory of it was like a knife at his heart.

“Jes’ think, I said, only a day or so ago,” Martha went on, “that ‘Tildy wasn’t strong; an’ I was glad of it, Jim, I was glad of it!  I was jealous of huh havin’ a baby, too.  Now she’s daid, an’ I feel jes’ lak I’d killed huh.  S’p’osin’ God ‘ud sen’ a jedgment on me—­s’p’osin’ He’d take our little Jim?”

“Sh, sh, honey,” said Jim, with a man’s inadequacy in such a moment.  “‘Tain’t yo’ fault; you nevah wished huh any ha’m.”

“No; but I said it, I said it!”

“Po’ Ike,” said Jim absently; “po’ fellah!”

“Won’t you go thaih,” she asked, “an’ see what you kin do fu’ him?”

“He don’t speak to me.”

“You mus’ speak to him; you got to do it, Jim; you got to.”

“What kin I say?  ’Tildy’s daid.”

She reached up and put her arms around her husband’s brawny neck.  “Go bring that po’ little lamb hyeah,” she said.  “I kin save it, an’ ‘ten’ to two.  It’ll be a sort of consolation fu’ him to keep his chile.”

“Kin you do that, Marthy?” he said.  “Kin you do that?”