"Here he is, Mother," said Russ, entering the hall with the colored boy.

The other children had come downstairs now and all understood just what Margy and Mun Bun had tried to do for the stranger. Mother Bunker smiled kindly upon the wretched lad, even if Aunt Jo did look on a little doubtfully from the background.

"We understand all about it, boy," Mother Bunker said. "The little folks only wanted to help you; and so do we. Do you live in Boston?"

"Me, Ma'am? No, Ma'am! I lives a long way souf of dis place. Dat I do!"

"And have you no friends here?"

"Friends? Whar'd I get friends?" he demanded, complainingly. "Dey ain't no friends for boys like me up Norf yere."

"Oh! What a story!" exclaimed Aunt Jo. "I know people must be just as kind in Boston as they are in the South."

"Mebbe dey is, lady," said the colored boy, looking somewhat frightened because of Aunt Jo's vigorous speech. "Mebbe dey is; but dey hides it better yere. If yo' beg a mess of vittles in dis town dey puts yo' in jail. Down Souf dey axes you is you hongry? Ya-as'm!"

At that Aunt Jo began to bustle about to the great delight of the children. She called down to Parker, the cook, and asked her to put out a nice meal on the end of the kitchen table and to make coffee. And then she said she would go up to the attic where, in a press in which she kept garments belonging to a church society, there were some warm clothes that might fit the colored boy.

Rose and Vi went with Aunt Jo to help, or to look on; but Margy and the three boys stayed with their mother to hear more that the visitor might say.

"My name's Sam," he replied to Mother Bunker's question. "Dat is, it's the name I goes by, for my hones'-to-goodness name is right silly. But I had an Uncle Sam, and I considers I has got a right to be named after him. So I is."

"Does your Uncle Sam wear a tall hat and red-and-white striped pants with straps under the bootsoles and stars on his vest?" asked Laddie, with great interest and eagerness.

"I dunno, little fellow," said Sam. "I ain't never seen my Uncle Sam, but I heard my mammy talk about him."

Russ and his mother were much amused at Laddie's question. Russ said:

"That Uncle Sam you are talking about, Laddie, is a white man. He couldn't be this Sam's uncle."

"Why not?" demanded Laddie, with quite as much curiosity as his twin sister might have shown.

"Very true, why not?" repeated Mrs. Bunker, with some gravity. "You are wrong, Russ. Our Uncle Sam is just as much this Sam's uncle as he is ours. Now go down to the kitchen, Sam. I hear Parker calling for you.

Eat your fill. And wait down there, for we shall want to see you again."

CHAPTER IV

DADDY'S NEWS

Aunt Jo found the garments she meant to give to Sam, the strange colored boy, and she and Rose and Vi came downstairs with them to the room in which the children had been playing at first. Russ and Laddie had set up the sectional bookcase once more and the room looked less like the wreck of an auction room, Mother Bunker said.

She had returned with Margie and the boys. They thought it better--at least, the adults did--to leave Sam in the kitchen with Parker and Annie, the maid.

"But I hate to see that boy go away from here in this storm," said kind-hearted Aunt Jo. "Perhaps what he says about us Boston people in comparison with those where he comes from, is true. The police do arrest people for begging."

"Well, we have tramps at Pineville," Mother Bunker observed. "But the constable doesn't often arrest any. Not if they behave themselves. But a city is different. And this boy did not know how to ask for help, of course. Don't you think you can be of help to him, Jo?"

"I'll see," said Aunt Jo. "Wait until he has had a chance to eat what Parker has fixed for him."

Just then Annie, the parlormaid, tapped on the door.

"Please'm," she said to Aunt Jo, "that colored boy is goin' down in the cellar to fix the furnace."

"To fix the furnace?" cried Aunt Jo.

"Yes'm. He says he has taken care of a furnace before. He's been up North here for 'most two years. But he lost his job last month and couldn't find another."

"The poor boy," murmured Mother Bunker.

"Yes'm," said Annie. "And when he heard that the house was cold because me nor Parker didn't know what to do about the furnace, and the fire was most out, he said he'd fix it. So he's down there now with Parker and Alexis."

"Did Alexis come home?" cried Russ, who was very fond, as were all the Bunker children, of Aunt Jo's great Dane. "Can't we go down and see Alexis?"

"And see Sam again," said Margy. "Me and Mun Bun found him, you know."

It seemed to the little girl as though the colored boy had been quite taken away from her and from Mun Bun. They had what Mother Bunker laughingly called "prior rights" in Sam.

"Well, if he is a handy boy like that," said Aunt Jo, referring to the colored boy, "and can fix the furnace, we shall just have to keep him until William is well again. Has he finished his dinner, Annie?"

"Not yet, Ma'am. And indeed he was hungry. He ate like a wolf. But when he heard about us all being beat by that furnace, down he went. There!

He's shaking the grate now. You can hear him. He said the ashes had to be taken out from under the grate or the fire never would burn. Yes'm."

"Well, then," said Mother Bunker, "you children will have to wait to see Sam--and Alexis--until he has finished eating."

"Annie," said Aunt Jo quickly, before the girl could go, "how does Alexis act toward this boy?"

"Oh, Ma'am! Alexis just snuffed of him, and then put his head in his lap. Alexis says he's all right. And for a black person," added the parlormaid, "I do think the boy's all right, Ma'am."

She went out and Aunt Jo and Mother Bunker laughed. The youngsters were suddenly excited at that moment by the stopping of a taxicab at the door. Vi had spied it from the window, for hard as it snowed she could see that.

"Here's Daddy! Here's Daddy!" she cried, dancing up and down.

Mun Bun and Margy joined in the dance, while the other three children entered upon a whirlwind rush down the stairway to meet Mr. Bunker at the front entrance.

He came in, covered with snow, and with his traveling bag. The children's charge upon him would surely have overturned anybody but Daddy Bunker.

"I scarcely dare come home at all," he shouted up the stairway to his wife and Aunt Jo, "because of these young Indians. You would think they were after my very life, if you didn't know that it was my pockets they want to search."

He shook off the clinging snow and the clinging children until he had removed his overcoat. Russ grabbed up the bag, and Rose and Laddie each captured an arm and were fairly carried upstairs by Mr. Bunker. He landed breathless and laughing with them in the middle of the big room which Aunt Jo had given up to the six little Bunkers as their playroom while they visited here in her Back Bay home.

"What is the news, Charles?" asked Mother Bunker, almost as eagerly as the children themselves might have asked the question.

"I've got to see Armatage personally--that is all there is about it, and Frank Armatage cannot come North."

"Then you are going?" said his wife, and the children almost held their several breaths to catch Daddy Bunker's reply.