Addison and I were weeding a strawberry bed
just inside the fence and could not avoid overhearing something of what
passed.
Astonished and a little indignant, too, perhaps, Miss Emmons told Jim
that a young man of his habits had no right to address himself in such a
manner to any young woman.
"But I can reform!" Jim said.
"Let folks see that you have done so, then," Miss Emmons replied, and
added that a young man who could not be trusted with his own bank book
could hardly be depended on to make a home.
It is quite likely that Jim brooded over the rebuff; he was surly for a
week afterwards. Then, like the weakling that he had become, he stole
away for another playday; and again grandmother, with Theodora's and
Miss Emmons's connivance, hid the book, this time somewhere in the
wagon-house cellar.
Jim did not come home to demand his book, however; in fact, he did not
come back at all. Shame perhaps restrained him. When on the third day
the old Squire drove down to the village to get him, he found that Jim
had gone to Bangor with two disreputable cronies.
A week or two passed, and then came a somewhat curt letter from Jim,
asking grandmother to send his bank book to him at Oldtown, Maine.
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