It was Sunday, and Jim was walking home from church with the Leslies. A gradual, but very great change had come over him since Taffy’s death. He had grown nearly as cheerful as he was before it happened, and did not seem to be exactly unhappy, but only the day before, Johnny had said to his mother,—  
“I don’t think Jim can be well, mamma; he let slip the best kind of a chance for taking me off, the way he’s so fond of doing, this morning, and when I come to think of it, he hasn’t said any of those things for a good while.”
 
Mrs. Leslie smiled at Johnny’s conclusion; she did not think that was the reason, and she said,—
 
“He looks well, dear. He is growing fast, and so getting thinner, but I don’t see any signs of ill health about him.”
 
“There’s something about him,” said Johnny, in puzzled tones, “I never knew him to miss a chance of saying one of his sharp things, till lately; in fact, I used to think he was watching out for them!”
 
Johnny had not been mistaken in thinking so. Somebody has said that if we look to the very root of our ill-will against anyone, we shall find that it is envy; and though this does not, perhaps, always hold good, it certainly does in many instances. Ever since Jim had known Johnny, there had been in his heart an unacknowledged feeling of envy, of which he was himself only dimly aware. Why should Johnny have been given that safe, pleasant home, with a father and mother and sister of whom he could be both fond and proud, while he, Jim, was left to fight for even his daily bread, with no ready-made home and friends, such as most people had? For even among the boys with whom he was chiefly thrown, many had some place which they called home, and somebody who cared, were it ever so little, whether they lived or died. He persuaded himself that it was because Johnny was “foolish,” and “needed taking down” that he said disagreeable things to him, but, since Taffy died, he had, as he expressed it to himself, been “sorting himself out, and didn’t think much of the stock.”
 
His face, this morning, wore a troubled look, which Mrs. Leslie was quick to notice, but she had learned that, in with Jim, she must use very much the same tactics that one uses in trying to tame some little wild creature of the woods—a sudden attack, or even approach, scared him off effectually; and although now he no longer ran, , as he had done at first, he would take refuge in silence, or an awkward changing of the subject.
 
She had stopped asking him to take meals with them, when she saw how it him. He was painfully conscious of his want of training, and shrank from exposing it, and he was shrewd enough to know that there is no surer test of “manners” than behavior at the table.
 
But the evening visits, begun with the making of the gardens, and the reading and singing lessons, she had managed to have continued after the gardens were frostbitten, and the early nightfall made the evenings long. Yet even about this she had been obliged to exercise a great deal of and care. Jim had announced that the lessons were to end the moment there was no more work for him to do, and she knew that he meant what he said, so, after thinking a good deal, she appealed to Mr. Leslie for help.
 
“You don’t happen to want kindling-wood just now, perhaps?” he asked, after thinking a little.
 
“Don’t I?” she replied. “Why, we always want kindling-wood! I believe that fair kitchen-maid could burn ‘the full of the cellar,’ as she would put it, in a week, if she could get that much to burn.”
 
“Oh, well then,” said Mr. Leslie, cheerfully, “It’s all right. I happen to know where I can get a load of pine logs and , in comparison with which a ram’s horn is a ruler! I should think half a , or one log, an evening might be considered a fair allowance, and you shall have them before the gardens are done for, to make sure. You can explain to your muscular scholar that, by having a few days’ allowance chopped at a time, the reckless can be kept within bounds. But Jim will have my sympathy when he comes to those stumps!”
 
“He will like it all the better for being so hard, I do believe,” replied Mrs. Leslie, and this proved to be true. When[171] Jim had for half an hour with a stump which looked like a collection of buffaloes’ heads, he sat down to his lesson with calm satisfaction; no one could say that he had not earned it.
 
Mrs. Leslie had been very much pleased by his consent to share the Sunday evening talk—for it could scarcely be called a lesson—without offering to do anything in return, and, although he had always been respectfully , she had noticed a growing interest and earnestness, since Taffy’s death, which made her feel very glad and hopeful.
 
She could not help thinking, to-day, as she glanced at Jim, of the great change in his appearance. He had bought a cheap, but neat and well-fitting suit of dark clothes, and he still wore the little black necktie. This suit he kept for Sundays, except that he always brought the coat on his lesson evenings, and put it on when his chopping was done. He was very careful, now, to be clean and neat, even when he wore his old clothes.
 
Extraordinary patches and darns had taken the place of rents and holes, about which, , he had neither thought nor cared. His face had always been honest and cheerful, and a new gentleness made it, now, very pleasant to look at. And he was growing tall. He had always been somewhat taller than Johnny, and now he overtopped him by a head, a fact which gave Johnny no satisfaction whatever. Mrs. Leslie bade Jim goodbye at the gate, with an to their meeting in the evening, and he assured her that he was coming.
 
“Something is troubling Jim,” she said to the children, as they all went upstairs, “and I want very much, if I can do it without asking impertinent questions, to find out what it is. Perhaps we could help him.”
 
“You could, mamma dear,” said Johnny, “even if Tiny and I couldn’t. Jim’s queer; he doesn’t like to talk things out, the way I do—and I’ll tell you what, Tiny, I think you and I had better leave Jim alone with mamma a little while, when we’ve finished talking about our verses. He’d be much more apt to tell her if there were nobody else there.”
 
Mrs. Leslie kissed her boy very lovingly. He was growing in the grace of unselfishness and thoughtfulness for others, in a way that warmed her heart.
 
Jim brought a great bunch of wild roses to Mrs. Leslie, when he came that evening, and she thanked him warmly.
 
“I did not think they had come yet,” she said, “and I never feel as if summer were really here to stay until the roses come. Where did you find them, dear?”
 
Jim’s heavy face brightened for a moment. He saw that Mrs. Leslie had called him “dear” without knowing it—just as naturally as she said it to Johnny, and a wave of happy feeling went over his heart.
 
“Away out in the coun............