are
wrong, Russ. Our Uncle Sam is just as much this Sam's uncle as he is
ours. Now go down to the kitchen, Sam. I hear Parker calling for you.
Eat your fill. And wait down there, for we shall want to see you
again."

CHAPTER IV

DADDY'S NEWS

Aunt Jo found the garments she meant to give to Sam, the strange colored
boy, and she and Rose and Vi came downstairs with them to the room in
which the children had been playing at first. Russ and Laddie had set up
the sectional bookcase once more and the room looked less like the wreck
of an auction room, Mother Bunker said.

She had returned with Margie and the boys. They thought it better--at
least, the adults did--to leave Sam in the kitchen with Parker and
Annie, the maid.

"But I hate to see that boy go away from here in this storm," said
kind-hearted Aunt Jo. "Perhaps what he says about us Boston people in
comparison with those where he comes from, is true. The police do arrest
people for begging."

"Well, we have tramps at Pineville," Mother Bunker observed. "But the
constable doesn't often arrest any. Not if they behave themselves. But a
city is different. And this boy did not know how to ask for help, of
course. Don't you think you can be of help to him, Jo?"

"I'll see," said Aunt Jo. "Wait until he has had a chance to eat what
Parker has fixed for him."

Just then Annie, the parlormaid, tapped on the door.

"Please'm," she said to Aunt Jo, "that colored boy is goin' down in the
cellar to fix the furnace."

"To fix the furnace?" cried Aunt Jo.

"Yes'm. He says he has taken care of a furnace before. He's been up
North here for 'most two years. But he lost his job last month and
couldn't find another."

"The poor boy," murmured Mother Bunker.

"Yes'm," said Annie. "And when he heard that the house was cold because
me nor Parker didn't know what to do about the furnace, and the fire was
most out, he said he'd fix it. So he's down there now with Parker and
Alexis."

"Did Alexis come home?" cried Russ, who was very fond, as were all the
Bunker children, of Aunt Jo's great Dane. "Can't we go down and see
Alexis?"

"And see Sam again," said Margy. "Me and Mun Bun found him, you know."

It seemed to the little girl as though the colored boy had been quite
taken away from her and from Mun Bun. They had what Mother Bunker
laughingly called "prior rights" in Sam.

"Well, if he is a handy boy like that," said Aunt Jo, referring to the
colored boy,