Addison and I were weeding a strawberry bed just inside the fence and could not avoid overhearing something of what passed.
Astonished and a little indignant, too, perhaps, Miss Emmons told Jim that a young man of his habits had no right to address himself in such a manner to any young woman.
"But I can reform!" Jim said.
"Let folks see that you have done so, then," Miss Emmons replied, and added that a young man who could not be trusted with his own bank book could hardly be depended on to make a home.
It is quite likely that Jim brooded over the rebuff; he was surly for a week afterwards.

Then, like the weakling that he had become, he stole away for another playday; and again grandmother, with Theodora's and Miss Emmons's connivance, hid the book, this time somewhere in the wagon-house cellar.
Jim did not come home to demand his book, however; in fact, he did not come back at all.

Shame perhaps restrained him.

When on the third day the old Squire drove down to the village to get him, he found that Jim had gone to Bangor with two disreputable cronies.
A week or two passed, and then came a somewhat curt letter from Jim, asking grandmother to send his bank book to him at Oldtown, Maine.

The letter put grandmother in a great state of mind, and she declared indignantly that she would not send it.