There was another silence. It might have lasted ten minutes. The boy was falling once more into a doze when the soft voice lisped again,
"Tom."
He did his best to drag himself back from sleep. "Yes, dad? Do you want to know what time it is? I'll get up and look."
"No, stay where you are. There's somethin' I want to say. I've been a skunk to you."
"Oh, cut it, dad...."
"I won't cut it. I want to say it out. When I—when I first took you, it wasn't—it wasn't so much that I'd took a fancy to you...."
"I know it wasn't, dad. You wanted a boy to pick the berries. Let's drop it there."
But the fevered conscience couldn't drop it there. "Yes; at first. And then—and then it come into my mind that you might be—might be the one that'd do somethin' I didn't want to do myself. I thought—I thought that if you done it we might get by on it. We got by on it all right—or up to now we've got by—but I didn't get real fond of you till—till...."
"Oh, dad, let's go to sleep."