“If you can’t do as I tell you you’ll have to get out. You think just
because you’re up North here you can do as you please. Well, I’ll show
you. Are you going to obey me?”
“Please, sir, Mas’ Wayne, I’m goin’ to do everythin’ just like you tell
me, savin’ that! I jus’ can’ go an’ eat anythin’ ’less you come along.
I’m powerful sorry, hones’ to goodness, Mas’ Wayne, but you can see how
’tis.”
Wayne muttered something that sounded far from complimentary, and
relapsed into dignified silence. The white stars came out one by one
and the chill of evening made itself felt. Sam tired of pretending and
begged to be taken up by Wayne, but Wayne brushed his paws aside. June
sat motionless on his end of the old wheelbarrow and made no sound.
Now, when you haven’t had anything to eat since early morning and
have tramped miles over city pavements pride is all very well but it
doesn’t butter any parsnips. Besides, Wayne realised just as clearly
as you or I, or almost as clearly, that he was making a mountain of a
molehill and that if he wasn’t so tired and discouraged he wouldn’t
have hesitated to share June’s earnings. But pride, even false pride,
is always stubborn, and it was well toward dark before Wayne shrugged
his shoulders impatiently and jumped up from his seat.
“Oh, come on then, you stubborn mule,” he muttered. “If you won’t eat
without me I reckon I’ll have to go along.”
He stalked off into the twilight and June and Sam followed, the former
with a little shuffling caper unseen of Wayne and the latter with an
ecstatic bark.
In the morning, when they had again breakfasted none too grandly, at
the lunch-wagon, they were once more reduced to penury. Not only that,
but both boys were discovering that forty or fifty cents a day, while
sufficient to keep them from starvation, was not enough to satisfy two
healthy appetites. Neither made mention of his discovery, but Wayne,
again encouraged by food and rest, told himself resolutely that today
must end the matter, that he would find something to do before he
returned to the little shed, and June as resolutely determined to try
harder and earn more money. What Sam’s thoughts were I don’t know. Sam
didn’t seem to care much what happened so long as he could be with
Wayne.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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