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“Are you willing to try him again, William?” she asked. “He has promised to do better.”

Old Mr. Cary cleared his throat and laid down his paper.

“Don’t deserve it,” he began; “dirty little thief.” And then he turned to the boy: “What have you got on, sir?”

His voice was really quite terrible.

“N-n-n-nothin’; only but des my b-b-b-briches an’ jacket, an’–an’–an’ skin,” Crow replied, between gasps.

“How many pockets?”

“Two,” said Crow.

“Turn ’em out!”

Crow drew out his little rust-stained pockets, dropping a few old nails and bits of twine upon the floor as he did so.

“Um–h’m! Well, now, I’ll tell you.

You’re a dirty little thief

, as I said before. And I’m going to treat you as one. If you wear those pockets hanging out, or rip ’em out, and come in here before you leave every day dressed just as you are–pants and jacket and skin–and empty out your basket for us before you go, until I’m satisfied you’ll do better, you can come.”

The old lady looked at her husband as if she thought him pretty hard on a very small boy. But she said nothing.

Crow glanced appealingly at her before answering. And then he said, seizing his pocket:

“Is you got air pair o’ scissors, lady?”

Mrs. Cary wished her husband would relent even while she brought the scissors, but he only cried:

“Out with ’em!”

“Suppose you cut them out yourself, Solomon,” she interposed, kindly, handing him the scissors. “You’ll have all this work to do yourself. We can’t make you good.”

When, after several awkward efforts, Crow finally put the coarse little pockets in her hands, there were tears in her eyes, and she tried to hide them as she leaned over and gathered up his treasures–three nails, a string, a broken top, and a half-eaten chunk of cold corn-bread. As she handed them to him she said: “And I’ll lay the pockets away for you, Solomon, and when we see that you are an honest boy I’ll sew them back for you myself.”

As she spoke she rose, divided the figs evenly between the two baskets, and handed one to Crow.

If there ever was a serious little black boy on God’s beautiful earth it was little Solomon Crow as he balanced his basket of figs on his head that day and went slowly down the garden walk and out the great front gate.

The next few weeks were not without trial to the boy. Old Mr. Cary continued very stern, even following him daily to the

banquette

, as if he dare not trust him to go out alone. And when he closed the iron gate after him he would say in a tone that was awfully solemn:

“Good-mornin’, sir!”

That was all.

Little Crow dreaded that walk to the gate more than all the rest of the ordeal. And yet, in a way, it gave him courage. He was at least worth while, and with time and patience he would win back the lost faith of the friends who were kind to him even while they could not trust him. They were, indeed, kind and generous in many ways, both to him and his unworthy mother.

Fig-time was soon nearly over, and, of course, Crow expected a dismissal; but it was Mr. Cary himself who set these fears at rest by proposing to him to come daily to blacken his boots and to keep the garden-walk in order for regular wages.

“But,” he warned him, in closing, “don’t you show your face here with a pocket on you. If your heavy pants have any in ’em, rip ’em out.” And then he added, severely: “You’ve been a very bad boy.”

“Yassir,” answered Crow, “I know I is. I been a heap wusser boy’n you knowed I was, too.”

“What’s that you say, sir?”

Crow repeated it. And then he added, for full confession:

“I picked green figs heap o’ days, and kivered ’em up wid ripe ones, an’ sol’ ’em to a white ‘oman fur perserves.” There was something desperate in the way he blurted it all out.