When Jimmy went away he left a letter
that sounded very much like it on the top of his mother's sewing
machine.
It wasn't a bicycle with Jimmy. It was chickens. Jimmy was wild over
chickens. He was a great favorite with Frank Burton. He helped Frank
about the coops and was so handy that Frank paid him regular wages and
gave him several settings of eggs. And in no time the boy had a
thriving little chicken business that might have grown into bigger
things. But Sears sold the whole thing out one day when he wanted
money worse than usual. And Jimmy, white to the very roots of his
reddish-brown hair, cursed his father and left home. He wandered
about, the Lord knows where, but eventually joined the army. He wrote
home once to tell his mother what he had done and to say that he
intended to save all his pay for the three years and start a chicken
farm with it somewhere.
And now gentle, little, eighteen-year-old Alice was gone too.
Mrs. Sears sat down and cried in that patient, helpless, miserable way
of hers. She didn't know just what she was crying for, herself or the
children. Life was a hopeless, unmanageable tangle that seemed to give
her nothing and take her all. So Mrs. Sears sat and cried. It was a
habit she had.
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