“That’s so, June,” acknowledged Wayne. “I forgot that.” But he was in
far too fine spirits to be worried by a little thing like that. He said
he reckoned they’d grow just the same, and June agreed with him, but a
trifle doubtfully. Then June questioned whether the planting had been
done at the right time of the moon, and Wayne lost patience and told
him to get busy and help carry stones for a border. They had to fairly
dig for those stones and it was almost twilight by the time they had
the bed neatly edged. Then June washed up and set about his culinary
duties, leaving Wayne outside to admire his handiwork from various
angles and try to picture mentally the appearance of that bed three
months later.
Wayne had brought home a slice of ham as a special delicacy and June
fried it to a turn, after cutting it in three pieces to fit the
diminutive pan, and made coffee, and cut bread, and opened a can of
peaches, and, in brief, prepared a banquet fit for Luculus--or two very
healthy and hungry boys, one of whom had been on short rations for a
week! Afterward, by the light of a swinging lantern which had taken the
place of the candles with which they had at first tried to illumine
their abode, Wayne read from the newspapers that June picked up at the
hotel and brought home with him. June had a weakness for such things
as robberies, murders, fires, shipwrecks, and similar sensations,
while Wayne always looked for the baseball news first. So, to be quite
fair, he alternated, reading first, perhaps, the story of a Texas bank
robbery and following with an interesting rumour regarding the trade
of Catcher Moffet to the Pirates by the Braves. Toward the last of the
news budget, especially if the robberies and train wrecks and such
gave out, June usually fell asleep and snored unflatteringly, and Wayne
finished his perusal in silence. But tonight the latter early exhausted
the papers and the boys fell to a discussion of Wayne’s new job and to
laying plans for the future.
“Of course,” said Wayne, “if I get eight dollars a week it won’t be
long before we can go on to New York.” He made the observation without
apparent enthusiasm, however. For the past fortnight New York had
slipped out of their conversation. June nodded, opened his mouth,
closed it again without speaking and once more nodded. “It doesn’t
cost us more than three dollars a week to live and so we’d have twenty
dollars saved up in no time at all,” Wayne added.
“That’s so,” agreed the other. “Reckon New York’s a mighty fine city,
ain’ it?”
“Wonderful, June.”
“Uh-huh. Bigger’n Medfield consid’able?”
“Medfield! Why, New York’s a thousand times bigger than Medfield, you
silly!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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