“For I’ve worked four hours this day, this day, For I’ve worked four hours this day. Keep your whiskers on, till the morning, John, For I shan’t work another minute longer!” We closed the doors of the car, sat in a far corner and munched our bread and cold meat as if it had been a luxury from a king’s banquet table. Then after our meal, in spite of the chilliness of the car, we stretched ourselves on our backs and gave our strained, worn muscles the opportunity of relaxation. “How do you feel?” Brock demanded after an interminable silence. “Cold, tired, weary and sick!” I replied, throwing the mask off. “Let us either wheel that old barrow again or go back to the University.” “Well,” muttered Brock, dispiritedly, “our backs can’t really get much worse, Priddy. We might as well finish a day’s work. If we leave now we’ll be unfit for work for another week anyway. We might as well get all we can out of it while we are about it.” “Oh, that barrow! If it were a thing of flesh I’d stab it for my worst enemy!” I cried. “We worked too steadily,” suggested Brock. “We were too ambitious. We’ll loaf along this afternoon and take more frequent rests. You pack the bricks for awhile. I’ll wheel!” “Lucky you proposed to wheel first,” I muttered, “for I’d have gone on strike if I’d been the first.” Brock looked knowingly at me, showed me the blisters on his hands and said, “I know just how you feel!” Numb, dispirited, weary and backsore, we worked until four o’clock in the afternoon. At that time, Brock was just coming across the bridge with a reduced load, staggering under it. I called out to him, “I’ll not handle another brick!” “Neither will I!” he replied, losing his grip and the handles of the barrow so that it fell to the frozen ground with a resounding thud. “I’m done!” When we reported at the office of the brickyard owner, and Brock had given the computations of the work we had done, my heart throbbed warmly for the first time since early morning when we were each handed a dollar and ten cents in real cash! “This is the first money I have handled for three months!” I could not help exclaiming in the office. “Do you mean it?” asked the contractor, interestedly. “I do, sir!” “Then any time between now and the end of the month that you want to earn a dollar or two come to this office and I’ll have some more bricks for you to load.” I looked with a smile towards Brock. Brock returned my gaze with a hearty laugh. Then he said, holding out his swollen hands, for the man to view, “No, thanks!” And I, I said, “Cash is good and I need it, but I think I’ll leave the handling of bricks to the Portuguese.” _Chapter XI. How I Competed with Patrick Henry and was made Aware of an Uneconomical Waste of the Eighth Letter of the Alphabet. How I Condensed all my Studies into an Oration. How the Populace Greeted my Rehearsal. Striking the Top Pitch_