Jimmy instantly relented.

He smiled an old boyish smile, that always caught Dannie in his softest spot.
"You are the bist frind I have on earth, Dannie," he said winsomely.
"You are a man worth tying to.

By gum, there's NOTHING I wouldn't do for you! Now go on, like the good fellow you are, and fix it up with Mary." So Dannie started for the wood pile.

In summer he could stand outside and speak through the screen.

In winter he had to enter the cabin for errands like this, and as Jimmy's wood box was as heavily weighted on his mind as his own, there was nothing unnatural in his stamping snow on Jimmy's back stoop, and calling "Open!" to Mary at any hour of the day he happened to be passing the wood pile.
He stood at a distance, and patiently waited until a gray and black nut-hatch that foraged on the wood covered all the new territory discovered by the last disturbance of the pile.