He jumped aside, dragged Dan, Junior, suddenly toward him, and then gave him a backward thrust which sent the lighter boy spinning.
Now, it had rained the day before and in a hollow beside the path was a puddle several inches deep. Dan, Junior, lost his balance, staggered back, tripped over his own clumsy heels, and splashed full length into it.
“Oh, oh!” he bawled, managing to get well soaked before he scrambled out. “I'll tell my father on you, Hi Strong. You'll catch it for this!”
“You'd better run home before you catch cold,” said Hiram, who could not help laughing at the young rascal's plight. “And let girls alone another time.”
To himself he said: “Well, the goodness knows I couldn't be much more in bad odor with Mr. Dwight than I am already. But this escapade of his precious son ought to about 'fix' me, as Dan, Junior, says.
“Whether I want to, or not, I reckon I will be looking for another job in a very few days.”
CHAPTER II. AT MRS. ATTERSON'S
When you came into “Mother” Atterson's front hall (the young men boarders gave her that appellation in irony) the ghosts of many ancient boiled dinners met you with—if you were sensitive and unused to the odors of cheap boarding houses—a certain shock.
He was starting up the stairs, on which the ragged carpet threatened to send less agile persons than Mrs. Atterson's boarders headlong to the bottom at every downward trip, when the clang of the gong in the dining-room announced the usual cold spread which the landlady thought due to her household on the first day of the week.