“I don’t like it at all,” was the reply; “and it has gone about as far as it will with me, too. If the old man thinks I am going to vegetate down here for the next six months, he is badly mistaken. I won’t do it to please anybody.” “You can’t help yourself,” said his brother. “I can’t! I’ll show you that I can. I’ll write a letter to mother this very night, and tell her that I want money enough to take me home.” “O, of course that will bring it,” said Marshall, with a laugh which said that he thought it would not. “You know what father said the last thing before we left, don’t you--that we need not write for money, because we couldn’t have a cent?” “Yes, I know, but I’ll get it, all the same. See there,” said Clarence, exhibiting almost a handful of small change. “Where did you get that?” demanded his brother. “Mother gave it to me just before we left home. She said that I might want some spending money, and hinted that when this was gone, I knew where I could get more. I’ll ask for more at once; and if it doesn’t come, I’ll drop a line to mother telling her that if she wants to see me again, she had better be doing something. That always wakes her up!” “It has had the desired effect so far, I admit,” said Marshall. “But suppose father should get hold of one of those threatening letters, and should write back to you: ‘My dear Clarence: You have talked this way often enough. You shan’t have a cent.’ What would you do then?” “Well, in the first place, there is no danger that my letters will ever fall into his hands, for mother takes precious good care to put them in the grate as soon as she reads them; and in the next place, I’d make the old man repent such an act the longest day he lived. I’d clear out, and he’d never see me again!” “O, nonsense!” exclaimed Marshall, tucking up his sleeves preparatory to plunging his hands into the wash-bowl. “You are not the one to cut loose from a comfortable home and go out into the world to make your own living, as long as you can avoid it. You like your ease altogether too well for that. Tell us some other funny story, please.” “There is no funny story about this. I am in earnest, and you’ll see if I don’t get the money in less than two weeks. I can’t live down here in this wilderness--no billiards, no theatres, no nothing that’s interesting. How is one to kill time, I wonder?” “You must read, and hunt, and fish, and ride on horseback,” replied Marshall, in a tone of voice that would have made Bert open his eyes if he could have heard it. “That is the way our worthy cousins put in their leisure moments.” “They must find it highly entertaining. I should expect it of them. Did you ever see two such country bumpkins? Wouldn’t they cut a pretty figure in the city? Why, when we were introduced to them they were as dumb as clams.”