"Well, it wan't four months before I had ter write Jimmy again. Sam
asked me too, this time. Mis' Hadley was sick again, an' Sam was
worried. He thought Jimmy ought ter come home, but he didn't like ter
say so himself. He wondered if I wouldn't drop him a hint. So I wrote,
an' Jimmy wrote right away that he'd come.
"We was all of a twitter, 'course, then--the whole town. He'd got
another prize--so the paper said--an' there was a paragraph praisin' up
some pictures of his in the magazine. He was our Jimmy, an' we was proud
of him, yet we couldn't help wonderin' how he'd act. We wan't used ter
celebrities--not near to!
"Well, he came. He was taller an' thinner than when he went away, an'
there was a tired look in his eyes that went straight ter my heart.
'Most the whole town was out ter meet him, an' that seemed ter bother
him. He was cordial enough, in a way, but he seemed ter try ter avoid
folks, an' he asked me right off ter get him 'out of it.' I could see he
wan't hankerin' ter be made a lion of, so we got away soon's we could
an' went ter his home.
"You should have seen Mis' Hadley's eyes when she saw him, tall an'
straight in the doorway. And Sam--Sam cried like a baby, he was so proud
of that boy. As fer Jimmy, his eyes jest shone, an' the tired look was
all gone from them when he strode across the room an' dropped on his
knees at his mother's bedside with a kind of choking cry.
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