Page 83 (1/2)

Bud did not rehts went back across

those two years and clung to his own baby, and he wished poignantly that

he kneas getting along; and wondered if it had grown to be

as big a handful as this youngster, and how Marie would handle the

e with now: a lost, lonesoo to sleep and could not tell why

Yet Lovin Child was answering every one of Bud's

there in his "Daddy Bud's" arms, wrapped comically in his Daddy Bud's

softest undershirt, Lovin Child was proving to his Daddy Bud that his

ownand beautiful and had a keen little brain

behind those twinkling blue eyes He was telling why he cried He wanted

Marie to take him and rock hiht of his young memory, until that time when he had

toddled out of her life and into a new and peculiar world that held no

Marie

By and by he slept, still clinging to the watch that had Marie's picture

in the back When he was all liainst

Bud's heart, Bud tiptoed over to the bunk, reached down inconveniently

with one hand and turned back the blankets, and laid Lovin Child in his

bed and covered him carefully On his bench beyond the dead line Cash

sat leaning forith his elbows on his knees, and sucked at a pipe

gone cold, and stared abstractedly into the fire