It was, nevertheless, a long day, and when the evening came he crept off by himself to listen to the whippoorwills and to look at the bright stars shining over the tops of the trees.
“The country’s nice enough,” he said to himself, “but it isn’t much fun to be a picker.” Then he thought of his mother and sister in the narrow, hot street, and wished they were with him. A sound of wild mirth, of snatches of song, of wrangling and shouting came to him from the pickers’ quarters. He dreaded returning to their midst and wished that he could sleep in the little white bed at Mr. Welch’s or in his own tiny room at home, instead of in one of those queer-looking bunks roughly made of boards and built along the sides of the room.
If his mother could have seen her boy that night asleep in that crowd of strange-looking persons, she would have been even more concerned than she was for his welfare.
Two or three days passed and Benny became more used to his surroundings. He made friends with some of the pickers, who took him under their protection when one big boy bullied him; but still he felt strange and out of place among them.
It was on the second day that he was elbowed out of his place, before some particularly well-filled vines, by a big, scowling Polish boy, who said, “You no beezness here, zis is for me.”
“I’d like to know why,” replied Benny, manfully.
“I come first,” retorted the boy, thrusting Benny aside.
“You may have come first to Mr. Bentley’s, but I came to this place first, and I’m going to stay,” continued Benny, valiantly holding his position.
The big boy doubled up his fists threateningly, and muttered something in a foreign tongue. Then he made a dash at Benny, but just as he reached him he was caught by the shoulder and a voice said, “Here, here, none of this! Get back to your place, you big fellow. You belong farther up the line,” and Benny saw that the overseer was at his side. “That’s an ugly chap,” he said to Benny, as Ivan departed, muttering. “I’m sorry we brought him. He doesn’t seem to make friends, and is a pretty mean enemy. You’d better keep out of his way. If he cuts up too high, just let me know, and I’ll drop him.”
Benny went back to his work much relieved, but it was evident that from henceforth Ivan bore him a grudge. He tried in numerous ways to annoy the little boy. Once he roughly ran against him, upsetting his load of a dozen boxes of strawberries which Benny was carrying on a board to where Mr. Bentley was keeping tally. This meant loss of time as well as of berries, for some of them were too crushed to be returned to their boxes, and Benny with rage in his heart, but with a helpless feeling, gathered up his fruit as best he could, knowing that what to the casual observer looked like an accident, was, in fact, an act of spite on the part of Ivan.