Six Little Bunkers at Mammy Junes | Page 7

hungry, aren't you?"
"Sure is," groaned the boy.
"Then they will give you something to eat and let you get warm. You'd
better come," added Russ very sensibly, "for it looks as if it would be a
big storm."

"Sure do," agreed the colored boy again. "Ah don' like dis snow. Don't
have nothin' like dis down whar I come f'om. No, suh."
"Now, come on," said Russ eagerly. "My mother's waiting for us."
The negro lad hesitated no longer. Even Russ saw how weary and weak
he was as he stumbled on beside him. His shoes were broken, his
trousers were very ragged, and his coat that he had buttoned up closely
was threadbare. His cap was just the wreck of a cap!
"Yo' sure she ain't goin' to send for no policeman, little boy?" queried
the stranger. "I wasn't goin' to take them clo'es. No, suh!"
"She understands," said Russ confidently, and holding to the boy's
ragged sleeve led him up the steps of Aunt Jo's pretty house.
Russ saw Mr. North, the nice old gentleman who lived over the way,
staring out of his window at this surprising fact: Aunt Jo allowing a
beggar to enter at her front door! Still, Mr. North, as well as the rest of
the neighbors, had decided before this that almost anything astonishing
could happen while the six little Bunkers were visiting their Aunt Jo in
Boston's Back Bay district.
"Here he is, Mother," said Russ, entering the hall with the colored boy.
The other children had come downstairs now and all understood just
what Margy and Mun Bun had tried to do for the stranger. Mother
Bunker smiled kindly upon the wretched lad, even if Aunt Jo did look
on a little doubtfully from the background.
"We understand all about it, boy," Mother Bunker said. "The little folks
only wanted to help you; and so do we. Do you live in Boston?"
"Me, Ma'am? No, Ma'am! I lives a long way souf of dis place. Dat I
do!"
"And have you no friends here?"
"Friends? Whar'd I get friends?" he demanded, complainingly. "Dey

ain't no friends for boys like me up Norf yere."
"Oh! What a story!" exclaimed Aunt Jo. "I know people must be just as
kind in Boston as they are in the South."
"Mebbe dey is, lady," said the colored boy, looking somewhat
frightened because of Aunt Jo's vigorous speech. "Mebbe dey is; but
dey hides it better yere. If yo' beg a mess of vittles in dis town dey puts
yo' in jail. Down Souf dey axes you is you hongry? Ya-as'm!"
At that Aunt Jo began to bustle about to the great delight of the children.
She called down to Parker, the cook, and asked her to put out a nice
meal on the end of the kitchen table and to make coffee. And then she
said she would go up to the attic where, in a press in which she kept
garments belonging to a church society, there were some warm clothes
that might fit the colored boy.
Rose and Vi went with Aunt Jo to help, or to look on; but Margy and
the three boys stayed with their mother to hear more that the visitor
might say.
"My name's Sam," he replied to Mother Bunker's question. "Dat is, it's
the name I goes by, for my hones'-to-goodness name is right silly. But I
had an Uncle Sam, and I considers I has got a right to be named after
him. So I is."
"Does your Uncle Sam wear a tall hat and red-and-white striped pants
with straps under the bootsoles and stars on his vest?" asked Laddie,
with great interest and eagerness.
"I dunno, little fellow," said Sam. "I ain't never seen my Uncle Sam,
but I heard my mammy talk about him."
Russ and his mother were much amused at Laddie's question. Russ
said:
"That Uncle Sam you are talking about, Laddie, is a white man. He
couldn't be this Sam's uncle."

"Why not?" demanded Laddie, with quite as much curiosity as his twin
sister might have shown.
"Very true, why not?" repeated Mrs. Bunker, with some gravity. "You
are wrong, Russ. Our Uncle Sam is just as much this Sam's uncle as he
is ours. Now go down to the kitchen, Sam. I hear Parker calling for you.
Eat your fill. And wait down there, for we shall want to see you again."
CHAPTER IV
DADDY'S NEWS
Aunt Jo found the garments she meant to give to Sam, the strange
colored boy, and she and Rose and Vi came downstairs with them to
the room in which the children had been playing at first. Russ and
Laddie had set up the sectional bookcase once more and the room
looked less like the wreck