"Well, boys," said "mother," slowly getting up from before the fire and
hurriedly taking a few extra stitches in her knitting before laying it
down to look up at us, "you're early."
She looked up, not ten feet from the stranger, as he took off his
slouched hat and brushed back the white hair. In another minute her
arms were around his neck, and she was murmuring "James" in his ear, and
I, like a dumb fool, wondered who told her his name.
Well, to make a long story short, it was James Dillon himself, and the
daughter came in, and Ed came, and between the three they nearly
smothered the old fellow.
You may think it funny he didn't know me, but don't forget that I had
been running for three years--that takes the fresh off a fellow; then,
when I had the typhoid, my hair laid off, and was never reinstated, and
when I got well, the whiskers--that had always refused to grow--came on
with a rush, and they were red. And again, I had tried to switch with an
old hook-motion in the night and forgot to take out the starting-bar,
and she threw it at me, knocking out some teeth; and taking it
altogether, I was a changed man.
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