Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/121

 "Say!" grinned Dick.

"What?"

"I likes you."

"Do you?"

"Yassir, en I aint gwine home no mo'. I done run away, en I wants ter live wid you."

"Will you help me and Nelse work?"

"Dat I will. I can do mos' anyting. You ax yer Ma fur me, en doan let dat nigger Nelse git holt er me."

Charlie's heart went out to the ragged little waif. He took him by the hand, led him into the yard, found his mother, and begged her to give him a place to sleep and keep him.

His mother tried to persuade him to make Dick go back to his own home. Nelse was loud in his objections to the new comer, and Aunt Eve looked at him as though she would throw him over the fence.

But Dick stuck doggedly to Charlie's heels.

"Mama dear, see, they tried to cut his head oft with an axe," cried the boy, and he wheeled Dick around and showed the terrible scar across the back of his neck.

"I spec hits er pity dey didn't cut hit clean off," muttered Nelse.

"Mama, you can't send him back to be killed!"

"Well, darling, I'll see about it to-morrow."

"Come on Dick, I'll show you where to sleep!"

The next day Dick's mother was glad to get rid of him by binding him legally to Mrs. Gaston, and a lonely boy found a playmate and partner in work, he was never to forget.