“Peter,” he said, “I’m in trouble this morning. If you keep your eyes on Hill Street, you’ll notice that both the banker and his precious son are wearing bandaged heads. And, between us, I am proud to admit that the bandages are worn in deference to the accuracy of my aim: in the case of the son, with a piece of brick, in that of the father, with a heavy stool. There wouldn’t be the slightest use in my going to school this morning, Peter. I’d be expelled before noon. I am staving off that action by staying away. There isn’t room in the same class any longer for the son of the Ashwater banker and the son of the Ashwater washerwoman.” Peter Potter lifted a plump hand and drew it across the lips of his wide-open mouth, and then his jaws came together with a snap and from between his teeth he said slowly: “So _that’s_ the lay of the land?” Jason nodded. “Yes, Peter,” he said, “‘that’s the lay of the land.’ You’re the only friend I’ve got on earth. Will you let me come into your grocery and see if I can clean it up and get back some of your business, and help you as a boy ought to help his father? And will you let me have room among the barrels at the back, or upstairs, where I can set a trundle-bed?” Peter studied Jason and reflected. Then he delivered himself of his conclusion in the speech of fifty years of association. “It’s a blasted shame,” he said. “It hadn’t oughter be. This town oughter riz up an’ stand beside you and see that you get your schoolin’. But I guess the truth is that Martin Moreland has got so many men in his clutches that they don’t hardly know their souls are their own. I could have been in better shape myself, if I’d ’a’ borrowed from him when I needed money darn bad, but I’d said I wouldn’t do it, and I didn’t do it, and so I let my stock run down and I lost trade. But I figure that I’m one of about half a dozen men in town that he ain’t got his shackles on. It appeals to me that the rest of ’em comes mighty close to being critters that will jump through most any kind of a hoop that he holds before ’em when he cracks his whip. If you got your mind fully made up to this, you bet your sweet life you can have a bed in the upstairs. We’ll push the barrels back and straighten the boxes and run a partition across and fix you a nice place. Be a protection to the store to have you there. What was you figurin’ on about terms?” “I’ll tell you,” said Jason. “You give me enough food, enough milk and butter and dried beef and eggs and green stuff, to just barely keep my stomach from cramping and pinching all the time, and let me work a month. Then you figure yourself what I’ve been worth to you. And if you will, help me to buy the bed. The truth is, I spent every cent I had yesterday.” “All right,” said Peter Potter. “Things are always pretty dead about now. Let’s go right up and push back the clutter. Then I’ll go over to Jefferson’s furniture store and fix you up a bed.”