Jimmie

“ She was very sure of herself, very sure of the rightness of her attitude toward Jimmie. "I know how great he is," she said, as we went down, "and other people don't. So I've got to prove it."
It was at dinner that I first noticed a change in Jimmie. It was a change which was hard to define. Yet I missed something in him—the enthusiasm, the buoyancy, the almost breathless radiance with which he had rekindled our dying fires. Yet he looked young enough and happy enough as he sat at the table in his velvet studio coat, with his crisp, burnt-gold hair catching the light of the candles. ”

“ Several hours later I saw Jimmie, with a shining new milk-pail on his arm, followed by Amos with the milking-stool in his hand and his tongue in his cheek, go toward the Guernsey's stall.
We all looked expectantly at each other, then rose, as if by common consent, and followed.
Lady Mary tucked her arm under Mrs. Jimmie's, and gurgled deliciously.
"Oh, dear Mrs. Jimmie! Is your husband always as amusing as he has been here at Peach Orchard? If he is, I am sure mamma would just delight in him—only things aren't always happening at Combe Abbey to show him off as they are at Mrs. Jardine's." ”

“ Those stunning men dashed into our rooms muffled in military cloaks, which they tossed aside with such grace that they nearly secured my scalp, for all they were after Bee's and Mrs. Jimmie's. They were in velveteen hunting costumes; we in the smartest of evening dress. Jimmie had given his fancy free rein in ordering the dinner, but, to his amazement and indignation, the little game being played by the rest of us so surprised and baffled our guests that Jimmie's delicacies were removed with course after course untasted. ”

“ His face turned sidelong on his pillow, and through air as visibly transparent as a sheet of glass, Jimmie had steadily regarded this strange bell-answerer; and the bell-answerer had never so much as stirred his frigid glittering eyes in response. The silence that hung between them produced eventually a peculiar effect on Jimmie. Menials as a general rule should be less emphatic personally. Their unobtrusiveness should surely not emphasise their immanence. It had been Jimmie who was the first to withdraw his eyes, only once more to find them settling as if spellbound on those of his visitor. ”

“ On a sudden I saw Jimmie standing beside me. Shame and chagrin overtook me and I bent down to him and begged him to forgive me.
"Don't you mind me, Uncle Ranny," he put his hand in mine. "I'm a man, and I know a man has got to swear sometimes."
"No, Jimmie—not if the man has brains enough with which to think."
That contact with the child, however, seemed to release something in my clamped and aching skull.
"Run, Jimmie," I said, "and send Alicia out to me. I wish to speak to her."
Jimmie, to whom commissions are delight, was off like an arrow. ”

“ Jimmie grinned sheepishly as the Angel extricated him, and placed a strong board on the barrel for him to stand upon in safety.
Then Jimmie decided to saw a dead limb off, and leave the pruning to Sir Wemyss. So he took the saw and went valiantly to work, but it was tiresome, so he leaned his weight against the limb and industriously sawed his prop off, which sent him flying almost into Lady Mary's lap. He saved himself by his nimbleness, but this time Jimmie was mad—uncompromisingly mad. ”

“ Jimmie several times hit the wrong boy -- that is to say, he several times hit a wrong boy hard enough to arouse also in him a spirit of strife. Jimmie wore a little shirt-waist. It was passing now rapidly into oblivion. He was sobbing, and there was one blood-stain upon his cheek. The school-ground sounded like a pine-tree when a hundred crows roost in it at night. ”

“ I watched Jimmie as he first saw the Achensee. The colour came into his face, his eyes brightened, and he clenched his hands—a sure sign of feeling in Jimmie.
There was a little white steamboat at the pier. The lake spread out before us was of the colour which you see when you look down into the depths of some fine unmounted sapphire at Tiffany's. The pebbles on the beach under the water looked as if they were in a basin of blueing. I reached in to take one out, and thoroughly expected to find my hand stained when I withdrew it. ”

“ His lashes are gold as mama's wedding ring
and his mouth feels cool and smooth
like a flower wet with rain.
You wouldn't believe Jimmie was different...
till he showed you....
: :
Blind wet sheets flapping on the lines... sun in your eyes, dark gold sun full of little black spots, you have to blink and blink... round eyes of Jimmie.... Jimmie's blue jumper... blue shadow of wall... all the world holding still as when a clock stops... streets still... people still... no streets... no people... only sky and wall... sun glaring bright as God down at you and Jimmie... ”

“ Bee and Mrs. Jimmie followed us with gentle apprehension, for they are always a little suspicious of anything that Jimmie and I particularly like. Under a long, sloping roof we found several dozen little row-boats, with the "shipmaster," a peasant whose costume might have come out of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. He launched us, however, and the boat shot out into the lake, with Jimmie and me at the oars, and then we saw a sight that none of us had ever seen before. ”

“ She has trampled it so it will never be any good."
Mrs. Jimmie turned white, and leaned gaspingly on Lady Mary.
"Trampled him!" she cried. "Oh, come! Come quickly, and see if she has killed him!"
"My dear!" I cried, almost hysterical over her mistake. "The Country
Gentleman is a kind of sweet corn—not Jimmie! See, there he is now.
Look, dearest!"
Sure enough, there came Jimmie, a trifle sheepish, but defiant. His derby hat was without a brim, the milk-pail was jammed together like a folding lunch-box, and had a little foam on the outside, as the sole product of his milking prowess. ”

“ So Jimmie looked, very carefully, and he saw a white spot on the puppy dog's nose, and told him so.
"It's all right. I'm Jackie then," answered the little fellow. "I thought I was, but it's best to make sure."
"Can you play ball?" asked Jimmie. "My sister told me about you. It was very kind of you to bring her home. You haven't lived here very long, have you?"
"Not very. But I'm glad I could help your sister. She is a nice girl."
"Where's your brother, Peetie?" asked Jimmie. ”

“ Jimmie, stop that racket!” she continued with a loud clap of her hands. But Jimmie, whoever he was, only replied with another agonizing shriek. This time the princess called angrily, “Mamma, come and make Jimmie stop his shrieking. Miss Page is awfully frightened!”
Nathalie, as she heard the foregoing explanation, and realized that it was not an insane person screaming, gave a hysterical gasp and turned her head in the direction of the shrieks, but alas! her blinders, like a black wall, barred her vision. ”

“ In entertaining it, Jimmie felt himself fully justified in taking any possible course of escape.
"Well, my lad," began the Captain, addressing Jimmie in a not unkindly tone, the while his blue eyes regarded the lad with an amused glance, "now that you are a full-fledged Uhlan and your comrades are on their way home, you will be fitted out with a new uniform by the proper department. See that you select a good strong one, for we have plenty of rough work ahead of us. Yes?" ”

“ It seemed like a long-drawn sigh fluttering through the room, a gasp of relief—and then the blood was pounding madly at his temples, and he was back in the room again, the door closed once more behind him.
"Oh, Jimmie—why didn't you speak? I had to be sure that it was you."
It was her voice! Hers! The Tocsin! Here! She was here—here in his house!
"You!" he cried. "You—here!" He was pressing the electric-light switch frantically, again and again. ”

“ He seated himself quietly, and after saying, "It wasn't there, Bee," he went on smoking placidly.
Now, any one who knows anything about anything, cannot fail to admit that my sister ought either to be at the head of Tammany Hall or the army. She gave one look at Jimmie's suspiciously bland countenance, then gathered up her gloves, her veil and stick, and went slowly up-stairs, apparently in a brown study.
Jimmie is clever, but he is no match for a clever woman. No man is, for that matter. ”

“ Sure enough, every man in the garden slowly rose and ambled leisurely to a horse-trough in the centre of the garden in which lay perhaps a score of mugs in running water. Each took a stein or two or three, depending on his party, and formed in line in front of the counter across which the beer was passed.
"Come, Jimmie," I said. "I'm going to get my own stein."
"Why do they do that?" asked Mrs. Jimmie, after we had got in line.
"It saves the half-cent charged for service," answered the maid.
"Now isn't she funny!" complained Bee of me as I returned beaming with content. ”

“ Jimmie was violently shivering; his very toes were clinging to the mat on which he stood.
Swaying a little, and casting at the same time a strained whitened glance round the room in which every object rested in the light as if so it had rested from all eternity, he stood mutely and ghastly listening.
Even a large bedroom, five times the size of a small boy's attic, affords little scope for a fugitive, and shutting your eyes, darkening your outward face, is no escape. It had been a silly boast, he agreed—that challenge, that “dare” on the staircase; the boast of an idiot. ”

“ With that Jimmie stepped on the German's other foot, and they swore at each other in two languages and got hissed by the people around them. When he finally got back to us, we found it expedient not to make any remarks at all, and I was glad it was too dark for him to see our faces.
Yet, in spite of Jimmie and the heat and the ache in our backs and the hard unyielding bench, that afternoon at "Parsifal" is one of the experiences of a lifetime. ”

“ It was the week after Gavin had gone out into the storm and Christina was still going about in a sort of daze, with feelings still unanalyzed, when she remembered that Friday would be Jimmie's eighteenth birthday. Jimmie should have been through school, but he had done that disgraceful thing that, so far, no Lindsay had ever done; he had failed in his examinations the Summer before. Had it not been for the boys' going to war, the great event that absorbed the mind of the family, Jimmie might have fared badly. ”

“ One of his uncles, who loved him dearly, used to say: "It's enough to make Sir Joshua Reynolds (this was a great English painter, who had died years before) come out of his grave to paint Jimmie asleep!" Jimmie had delicate features and long, silky, brown curls that hung about his face. In among these was one white lock that dropped straight down over his forehead. This looked like a tiny feather. More than all his playthings he liked a pencil and paper. From the time he could scribble at all he drew pictures of everybody and everything in sight. ”

“ However, Jimmie kept bravely on, climbing the steps of every house on both sides of the street for the whole length of the block, but to no purpose; no one seemed to own the rabbit, and at last Jimmie sat down on the steps of his own home, still hugging the homeless rabbit and thinking that he would rest for a few minutes and then try the next block.
"I am not tired," said Jimmie sturdily to himself, as he stroked the rabbit lovingly. "God's child can't be tired, for He said so, and the little bunny isn't lost, either. Nothing can be lost, in God's world, and I ought to know it. ”

“ Billy looked distressed.
"Their horns are very strong!" he urged. "I don't believe it would hurt them one bit. And you might give me one of those little bottles I saw Mr. Jimmie open—you remember the little one you had after the two big ones, don't you, Mr. Jimmie?"
"Oh, yes, Billy," I said. "Mr. Jimmie remembers. (You'd be ashamed not to, wouldn't you, Jimmie?) "
"You think you're funny," growled Jimmie, witheringly, as Sir Wemyss and Captain Featherstone broke out afresh, and even Artie Beg left off looking at Cary long enough to smile at Jimmie's scarlet face and Mrs. Jimmie's anxious one. ”

“ There will be hours together when you must hold your tongue. You'll die!"
"No, I won't," I declared. "You don't know him. He is an Angel." And with that the argument closed, for Jimmie went off into such a fit of laughter that he choked, and his wife came in a fright to find me pounding him on the back with unnecessary force.
"But why," said Jimmie, when order had been restored, "did you take an apartment, when Aubrey's chief requirement is absence of noise! Furthermore, why do you live in New York, that city which reigns supreme in its accumulation of unnecessary bedlam?" ”

“ But he clearly knew, despite this confusion, that he was through with the girl. He must take more pains to avoid her. If met by chance, she must be snubbed—up-staged, as she would put it.
Under his blankets now, after many appealing close-ups of the sandwich which Jimmie had held out to him, he felt almost sorry that he had not taken the girl's food. All his being, save that part consecrated to his art, had cried out for it. Art had triumphed, and now he was near to regretting that it had not been beaten down. ”

“ If you do not believe in heredity, the fact that Jimmie’s great-great-grandfather was a scout for General Washington and hunted deer, and even bear, over exactly the same hills where Jimmie hunted weasels will count for nothing. It will not explain why to Jimmie, from Tarrytown to Port Chester, the hills, the roads, the woods, and the cowpaths, caves, streams, and springs hidden in the woods were as familiar as his own kitchen garden. ”