that
something in her heart would snap. But she worked on, her emotions,
yearnings, and fears all rigorously knitted into the tiny mittens.

"You'll let me wrap him up real warm?" she said.

Jim knew her thoughts were all on little Skeezucks.

"If you didn't do it, who would?" he asked, in a kindness of heart that
set her pulse to faster beating.

"But--s'pose you don't git any job in Fremont," Bone inquired. "Will
you let us know?"

"I'll git it, don't you fear," said Jim. "I know there ain't no one so
blind as the feller who's always lookin' for a job, but the little kid
has fetched me a sort of second sight."

"Well, if anything was goin' hard, we'd like for to know," insisted
Bone. "I guess we'd better start along, though, now, if we're goin' to
scare up a bronch to-night."

He and the blacksmith departed. Jim and the lorn Miss Doc sat silently
together in the warm little house. Jim looked at her quietly, and saw
many phases of womanly beauty in her homely face.

"Wal," he drawled, at last, "I'll go up home, on the hill." He
hesitated for a moment, and then added, quietly, "Miss Doc, you've been
awful kind to the little boy--and me."

"It wasn't nuthin'," she said.

They stood there together, beside the table.

"Yes, it was," said Jim, "and it's set me to thinkin' a heap." He was
silent for a moment, as before, and then, somewhat shyly for him, he
said, "When we come back home here, in the spring, Miss Doc, I'm
thinkin' the little feller ought to have a mother. Do you think you
could put up with him--and with me?"

"Jim," she said, in a voice that shook with emotion, "do you think I'm
a kind enough woman?"

"Too kind--for such as me," said Jim, thickly. He took her hand in his
own, and with something of a courtliness and grace, reminiscent of his
youth, he raised it to his lips. "Good-night," he said. "Good-night,
Miss Doc."

"Good-night, Jim," she answered, and he saw in her eyes the beauty that
God in his wisdom gives alone to mother-kind.

And when he had gone she sat there long, forgetting to keep up the
fire, forgetting that Doc himself would come home early in the morning
from his night-employment, forgetting everything personal save the
words old Jim had spoken, as she knitted and knitted, to finish that
tiny pair of mittens.

The night was spent, and her heart was at once glad and sore when, at
last, she concluded her labor of love. Nevertheless, in the morning
she was up