Jed sighed miserably.  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, “I knew it, but I only just realized it, as you might say.  I . . .  Hum! . . .  Well . . .”

He turned away and walked slowly toward the kitchen door.  Barbara would have followed but her mother laid a detaining hand upon her shoulder.  On the threshold of the door between the dining-room and kitchen Jed paused.

“Ma’am,” he said, hesitatingly, “you—­you don’t cal’late there’s anything I can do to—­to help, is there?  Anything in the packin’ or movin’ or anything like that?”

“No, thank you, Mr. Winslow.  The packing was very simple.”

“Er—­yes, ma’am. . . .  Yes, ma’am.”

He stopped, seemed about to speak again, but evidently changed his mind, for he opened the door and went out into the rain without another word.  Barbara, very much surprised and hurt, looked up into her mother’s face.

“Why, Mamma,” she cried, “has—­has he gone?  He didn’t say good-by to us or—­or anything.  He didn’t even say he was sorry we were going.”

Mrs. Armstrong shook her head.

“I imagine that is because he isn’t sorry, my dear,” she replied.  “You must remember that Mr. Winslow didn’t really wish to let any one live in this house.  We only came here by—­well, by accident.”

But Barbara was unconvinced.

“He isn’t glad,” she declared, stoutly.  “He doesn’t act that way when he is glad about things.  You see,” she added, with the air of a Mrs. Methusaleh, “Petunia and I know him better than you do, Mamma; we’ve had more chances to get—­to get acquainted.”

Perhaps an hour later there was another knock at the kitchen door.  Mrs. Armstrong, when she opened it, found her landlord standing there, one of his largest windmills—­a toy at least three feet high—­in his arms.  He bore it into the kitchen and stood it in the middle of the floor, holding the mammoth thing, its peaked roof high above his head, and peering solemnly out between one of its arms and its side.

“Why, Mr. Winslow!” exclaimed Mrs. Armstrong.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Jed.  “I—­I fetched it for Babbie.  I just kind of thought maybe she’d like it.”

Barbara clasped her hands.

“Oh!” she exclaimed.  “Oh, is it for me.”

Jed answered.

“’Tis, if you want it,” he said.

“Want it?  Why, Mamma, it’s one of the very best mills!  It’s a five dollar one, Mamma!”

Mrs. Armstrong protested.  “Oh, I couldn’t let you do that, Mr. Winslow,” she declared.  “It is much too expensive a present.  And besides—­”

She checked herself just in time.  It had been on the tip of her tongue to say that she did not know what they could do with it.  Their rooms at Mrs. Smalley’s were not large.  It was as if a dweller in a Harlem flat had been presented with a hippopotamus.

The maker of the mill looked about him, plainly seeking a place to deposit his burden.