By sunset he had rigged up a fairly watertight abode, six feet long by four wide and five in height, with a soft, if bumpy, carpeting of straw and jute. And, as he proved by further scouting, the shack was invisible from the street.
Then he tramped to a leaking hydrant, a quarter-mile distant, washed and scoured a small and a large can (both battered but leakless) he had found on the dump; and carried home his night’s supply of clean water. After which he sat down in the doorway of his piano-box shack and prepared his evening meal.
Dusk was creeping over the day. Back at home, just now, the family were sitting down to a repast of fricasseed chicken and dumplings and pie and all sorts of things.
Still, crackers and cheese and fresh water are not to be despised as an evening meal—particularly when they are spiced with adventure and reinforced by the hunger of a hustling day.
So it was not the frugality of his meal that made the fare so hard for Arnon to eat. At first he did not know just what caused the lump in his throat and what made even the tiniest morsel of food impossible to swallow. Being only a normal boy, he had never so much as heard of psychology. Nor was there any psychologist there to prate of “reaction” and “nerve exhaustion” and of any of the dozen kindred causes which made the lad feel as he did. One of these causes alone did Arnon understand. And this one—to which he would not confess—was bitter, lonely homesickness.
He had cut himself loose from everything and everybody. He was an exile and on the threshold of a new world. For all he knew, he might also be a fugitive from justice. For, when the money’s loss should be discovered, the bazaar people would probably think him a defaulter and set the police after him.
Three hours earlier Arnon had felt himself a true blend of martyr and explorer. Now he was all at once aware that he was just a lonesome and heavy-hearted boy who had no one to love him and whose only home was a smelly packing box. The lump in Arnon’s throat began to swell to unbelievable size. And the eyes wherewith he gazed up over the pit-edge at the dying day, grew foolishly misted.
This would never do!
Angrily he cleared his throat and winked very fast indeed. Then he forced himself to day-dreams of the splendid job he was going to win on the morrow and of the brevity of the time that must pass before he should save up ninety-eight dollars and be able to go home. But the effort was a pitiful failure. The lump nearly strangled him. And the mist would not behave itself and keep out of his silly eyes.