"
"Thankful--"
"Have you worn out your clothes luggin' the money around?"
"Auntie, don't. Look at him. Think!"
"Hush, Emily! I am lookin' at him and I'm thinkin', too. I'm thinkin'
of how much I put up with afore he run off and left me, and how I've
worried and laid awake nights thinkin' he was dead. Where have you been
all this time? Why haven't you written?"
"I did write."
"You wrote when you was without a cent and wanted to get money from me.
You didn't write before. Let me be, Emily; you don't know what I've gone
through on account of him and now he comes sneakin' into my house in the
middle of the night, without a word that he was comin', sneakin' in like
a thief and frightenin' us half to death and--"
Jedediah interrupted. "Sneakin' in!" he repeated, with a desperate move
of his hands. "I had to sneak in. I was scairt to come in when you
was up and awake. I knew you'd be down on me like a thousand of brick.
I--I--Oh, you don't know what I've been through, Thankful, or you'd
pity me, 'stead of pitchin' into me like this. I've been a reg'lar
tramp--that's what I've been, a tramp. Freezin' and starvin' and workin'
in bar-rooms! Why, I beat my way on a freight train all the way here
from New Bedford, and I've been hidin' out back of the house waitin' for
you to go to bed, so's I'd dare come in."
"So's you'd dare come in! What did you want to come in for if I wa'n't
here?"
"I wanted to leave a note for you, that's why. I wanted to leave a note
and--and that.
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