The boy, of a sudden, found himself not only happy, but ravenously hungry. He and his two pets finished the crackers and cheese with a zest. Then all three curled up close together in the straw and went to sleep.
At sunrise Arnon awoke. Both the dogs were already astir. As he raised his head and sat looking bewilderedly about, they ran frisking up to him.
And thus began the life of the three chums—in the sand-pit’s piano-box shack. It was a wonderful life for all of them. For Arnon, the dogs’ presence was a veritable godsend.
The boy set forth early that first morning, to look for a job. Naturally, he did not find one. Not only do business houses cut down their working force in summer, instead of adding to it; but a boy with no references has, at best, a hard time in landing a steady position,—especially if he stammers and grows red when he is asked where he lives and the name of his father.
No, in spite of The Boys’ Uplift Magazine, no kindly merchant was so impressed by Arnon’s manliness and good manners as to offer to teach him the business from the bottom up, with a view of making him, later on, a partner.
Arnon, after a half-day’s futile job-hunt, began to see how matters stood. He was sore inclined to give up the fight and to tramp all the way back to his parents’ home. But at once he remembered he could not. He had responsibilities,—responsibilities he could not shirk. At the shack his two dog-chums were waiting for his return. He could not take them a hundred and twenty miles, afoot. He had no means of feeding them on the way, even if no farm dogs should kill them or rural poundmasters seize them. No, they relied on him. And he had no right to fail them. He must stick.
That afternoon, by three hours of hanging around the Union Station, he cleared up twenty cents, carrying suit-cases and opening motorcar doors. He stopped at a tenement-district grocery, on his way back to the sand-pit, and continued his journey with a very respectable armful of provisions.
As he neared the Common, Arnon quickened not only his steps but his heartbeats. Suppose he were wrong in his estimate of his two new friends. Suppose they were only of the cadging, garbage-snooping type, and had deserted the shack the moment his back had been turned! The thought sickened him. It was for his dogs, not for himself, he had been working that day.
He reached the sand-pit edge and halted. At the same instant two furry little whirlwinds burst forth from the shack, whizzed up the steep sandy bank and, with barks of ecstasy, hurled themselves bodily upon the returning bread-winner.