He looked frankly up into her face as he answered.

"You aren't my Aunt Judith, tho' I wish you were, so I think I ought
to call you something beside the name, so I say _Mrs._ with it."

"Dear boy, you meant to be respectful," she said, "but you are such
a good, hard working boy now that you shall call me 'Aunt Judith' just
as the other children do."

He hesitated, and she understood.

"They shall not wonder why you do. I'll tell them that I asked you
to," she said.

Without a word he picked up his books, took his old cap, and crossed
the room.

Wondering that he did not speak she followed him.

At the door he turned, and looking up at her with eyes in which tears
glistened he said:

"I'm going to work with all my might, and I mean to be a decent man,
and _then_ I'll do something for you,--Aunt Judith."

"Gyp, come back and let me thank you!" she cried when, after her
surprise, she caught her breath, but a fit of his old shyness had come
over him, and having said what was in his heart, he had at once raced
off across the fields, and soon was out of sight or hearing in the