[Illustration: _Mrs. Jones came out to take care of the butter_.]

"Harold, O Harold, don't you want to come and look at the baby?" Now
James Sears in the twenty-four hours of his new sister's life had not
let the fact of her existence form expression on his lips. Much
less had he lowered his hostile flag to salute her; but he knew
instinctively that Harold Jones was the sort of a boy who would unsex
himself by looking at a baby. When Mealy answered, "Yes'm," and
trotted down the back-yard path to the kitchen, Jimmy Sears scorned
him heartily enough to fancy Mealy in the act of holding the loathsome
thing in his arms. Further contumely was beyond Jimmy's imagination.

[Illustration: _The sort of boy who would unsex himself by looking at
a baby_.]

[Illustration: _James_.]

When Mealy Jones came back, the barn wherein he had left Jimmy was
empty; and only when Mealy had started homeward, and a clod came
whizzing down the alley, hitting him under the ear, did Mealy know how
Jimmy Sears resented an insult. Mealy looked around; no one was in
sight.

Right here the reader should know that Jimmy Sears was not alone in
his displeasure. There was mutiny in the Sears household. When the
baby came, the four elder of the seven Sears children joined Jimmy
in informal, silent sedition. They looked upon the newcomer as
an intruder. For all who extended sympathy to the pretender, the
insurgents developed a wholesome scorn. This scorn fell most heavily
upon kind Mrs. Jones. The Sears children regarded her familiar
jocularity with undisguised repugnance; and when Jimmy heard Mrs.
Jones tell his little sister Annie that morning that she was no longer
the baby, Jimmy's rage at what he considered a fiendish thrust at the
innocent and forsaken child passed the bounds of endurance. He hurled
a bit of that anger in the clod that hit Mealy Jones, then Jimmy
walked doggedly back to the house. He coaxed the little sister from
the kitchen, took the child's chubby hand and led her to the barn.
There Jimmy nursed his sorrow. He assured the younker as they sat
on the hay that he for one would not desert her, "even if mamma had
forgotten her." He hugged the wondering tot until her ribs hurt, and
in his lamentations referred to the new baby as "that old thing."
The evening before, when Mrs. Jones had marshalled the other Sears
children and had taken them into the bedroom to see their new sister,
Jimmy was not to be found. None of the older chi