“He’ll charge you two dollars an hour, including time on the road,” solemnly announced Little Simon, unimpressed by any mention of the long-yellow.  Had Little Simon “liked,” he could probably have mended the car himself, but Mr. Straker’s manner, so effective on Broadway, was not to the taste of these country people.  He thought of them in their poverty as “peasants,” but without the kindliness of the born gentleman.  What Aleck Van Camp could have got for love, Mr. Straker could not buy; and he was at last obliged to appeal to Hand through Agatha’s agency.

“I’ll look at it again,” Hand replied shortly, when Agatha addressed him on the subject.

The car being temporarily out of commission, it was necessary for Mr. Straker to adopt some other means of making himself and everybody about him extremely busy.  He took a fancy for yachting, and got himself diligently instructed in an art which, of all arts, must be absorbed with the mother’s milk, taken with the three R’s and followed with enthusiastic devotion.  In Mr. Straker every qualification for seamanship was lacking save enthusiasm, but as he himself never discovered this fact, his amour propre did not suffer, and his companions were partly relieved of the burden of his entertainment.  Presently he made up his mind that it was time for him to see Jimmy.  His nose, trained for scenting news, led him inevitably to the chief actor in the unusual drama which had indirectly involved his own fortunes, and he saw no reason why he should not follow it at once.

“You’d better wait a while,” cautioned Doctor Thayer.  “That young man pumped his heart dry as a seed-pod, and got some fever germs on top of that.  He isn’t fit to stand the third degree just yet.”

“I’m not going to give him any third degree, not a bit of it.  ’Hero!  Saved a Princess!’ and all that.  That’s what’s coming to him as soon as the newspapers get hold of it.  But I want to know how he did it, and what he did it for.  Tell him to buck up.”

Jimmy did buck up, though Mr. Straker’s message still remains to be delivered.  He gathered his forces and exhibited such recuperative abilities as to astonish the old red house and all Ilion.  Doctor Thayer and each of his nurses in turn unconsciously assumed credit for the good work, and Sallie Kingsbury took a good share of pride in his satisfactory recovery.

“Two aigs regular,” she would say, with all a housekeeper’s glory in her guests’ enjoyment of food.

There was enough credit to go round, indeed, and Jimmy presently became the animated and interesting center of the family.  He might have been a new baby and his bedroom the sacred nursery.  He was being spoiled every hour of the day.

“Did he have a good night?” Agatha would anxiously inquire of Mr. Hand.

“Can’t tell which is night; he sleeps all the time,” would be the tenor of Mr. Hand’s reply.  Or Sallie would ask, as if her fate depended on the answer, “Did he eat that nice piece er chicken, Aunt Susan?” And Mrs. Stoddard would say, “Eat it!  It disappeared so quick I thought he’d choke.  Wanted three more just like it, but I told him that invalids were like puppy-dogs—­could only have one meal a day.”