It was Jim who made me feel at home. He was the
fellow I had longed for; the round peg of a chance acquaintance that
exactly fitted into the round hole of my holiday life, and he fulfilled
my every expectation. He would fish or hunt or carry a sketch-trap or
wash brushes, or loaf, or go to sleep beside me--or get up at
daylight--whatever the one half of me wanted to do, Jim, the other
half, agreed to with instant cheerfulness.
And yet, in spite of this constant companionship, I never crossed a
certain line of reserve which he had set up between us. He would ramble
on by the hour about the things around us; about the trees, the birds,
and squirrels; of the way the muskrats lived by the sawmill dam, and
their cleverness in avoiding his traps; about the deer that "yarded"
back of Taft's Knob last winter, and their leanness in the spring.
Sometimes he would speak of Mother Marvin, saying she "thought a heap of
Ruby, and ought to," and now and then he would speak of Ruby with a
certain tender tone in his voice, telling me of the prizes she had won
at school, and how nobody could touch her in "'rithmetic and readin'.
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