“Good gracious!  I shouldn’t worry over that possibility, if I were you.  I should scarcely blame you for wishing it might choke, after stealing your dinner.”

Mr. Winslow shook his head.  “That wouldn’t do,” solemnly.  “If it choked it couldn’t ever steal another one.”

“But you don’t want it to steal another one, do you?”

“We-ll, if every one it stole meant my havin’ as good an afternoon as this one’s been, I’d—­”

He stopped.  Barbara ventured to spur him on.

“You’d what?” she asked.

“I’d give up whittlin’ weather vanes and go mackerel-seinin’ for the critter’s benefit.  Well—­er—­good day, ma’am.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Winslow.  We shall expect you again soon.  You must be neighborly, for, remember, we are friends now.”

Jed was half way across the yard, but he stopped and turned.

“My—­my friends generally call me ‘Jed,’” he said.  Then, his face a bright red, he hurried into the shop and closed the door.

CHAPTER VIII

After this, having broken the ice, Jed, as Captain Sam Hunniwell might have expressed it, “kept the channel clear.”  When he stopped at the kitchen door of his tenants’ house he no longer invariably refused to come in and sit down.  When he inquired if Mrs. Armstrong had any errands to be done he also asked if there were any chores he might help out with.  When the old clock—­a genuine Seth Willard—­on the wall of the living-room refused to go, he came in, sat down, took the refractory timepiece in his arms and, after an hour of what he called “putterin’ and jackleggin’,” hung it up again apparently in as good order as ever.  During the process he whistled a little, sang a hymn or two, and talked with Barbara, who found the conversation a trifle unsatisfactory.

“He hardly ever finished what he was going to say,” she confided to her mother afterward.  “He’d start to tell me a story and just as he got to the most interesting part something about the clock would seem to—­you know—­trouble him and he’d stop and, when he began again, he’d be singing instead of talking.  I asked him what made him do it and he said he cal’lated his works must be loose and every once in a while his speaking trumpet fell down into his music box.  Isn’t he a funny man, Mamma?”

“He is indeed, Babbie.”

“Yes.  Petunia and I think he’s—­he’s perfectly scrushe-aking.  ’Twas awful nice of him to fix our clock, wasn’t it, Mamma.”

“Yes, dear.”

“Yes.  And I know why he did it; he told me.  ’Twas on Petunia’s account.  He said not to let her know it but he’d taken consider’ble of a shine to her.  I think he’s taken a shine to me, don’t you, Mamma?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“So am I. And I ’most guess he’s taken one to you, too.  Anyhow he watches you such a lot and notices so many things.  He asked me to-day if you had been crying.  I said no.  You hadn’t, had you, Mamma?”