"I suppose they think we're backwoods country folks," thought Betty, the blood coming into her face. "Don't know that I blame them, seeing that this wagon is patched and tied together in a hundred places and the horse looks like a shadow of a skeleton."
Bob continued to search in the dust of the road painstakingly. The two women clearly had shifted their trouble to him, and apparently had no further interest in the outcome. Betty longed to offer to help him, but the severity of his profile, as she glimpsed it now and then, deterred her.
"I wish I could stop before I say so much," mourned the girl to herself. "I ought to know that Bob can't help being afraid of Mr. Peabody. If he had control over me, I'd probably act just as his wife and Bob do. When you can get away from an ogre, it's easy enough to say you're not afraid of him. Doesn't Bob dominate the situation, as Mrs. Arnold used to say!"
Bob had found the nut, and was now fitting the wheel into place, working with a quickness and skill that fascinated Betty. She timidly called to him and asked if she should not come and hold the axle, but he refused her offer curtly. In a very few minutes the wheel was screwed on and the two ladies at liberty to resume their journey. They were insistent that Bob accept pay for his help, but the boy declined, politely but resolutely, and seemingly at no loss for diplomatic words and phrases.
"Were you born in the poorhouse, Bob?" Betty asked curiously, wondering where the lad had developed his ability to meet people on their own ground. The volubly thankful ladies had driven on, and the sorrel was now trotting briskly toward Bramble Farm.
"Yes, I was," said Bob shortly. "But my mother wasn't, nor my father. I've got a box buried in the garden that's mine, though the clothes on my back belong to old Peabody. And if I'm like Joe Peabody in other things, perhaps I'll learn to make money and save it. My father couldn't, or I wouldn't have been born in an alms-house!"
"Oh, Bob!" Betty cried miserably, "I didn't mean you were like Mr. Peabody—you know I didn't. I'm so sorry! I always say things I don't mean when I'm mad. Uncle Dick told me to go out and chop wood when I get furious, and not talk. I am so sorry!"
"We've got a wood pile," grinned Bob. "I'll show you where it is. The rest of it's all right, Betty. I'd probably have stayed awake all night if I'd driven by those women. Only I suppose Peabody will be in a towering rage. It must be noon."
If Betty was not afraid of Mr. Peabody, it must be confessed that she looked forward with no more pleasure than Bob to meeting him. Still she was not prepared for the cold fury with which he greeted them when they drove into the yard.
"Just as I figured," he said heavily. "Here 'tis noon, and that boy hasn't done a stroke of work since breakfast. Gallivanting all over town, I'll be bound. Going to be like his shiftless, worthless father and mother—a charge on the township all his days. You take that pail of whitewash and don't let me see you again till you get the pig house done, you miserable, sneaking poorhouse rat! You'll go without dinner to pay for wasting my time like this! Clear out, now."