“Hello, old chap!” said Tom, patting the dog’s head. “I guess I’m going to miss you more’n anything or anybody when I go away. I wish I could take you with me. I just do. But I guess you’d pretty near starve to death over there to Amesville. There wouldn’t be any buttermilk, Star, and there wouldn’t be any corn-bread, either, I guess. Well, I’ll be back on Saturdays to see you, anyway. What you been doing all day? Did you miss me?”
Star replied dog-fashion that he had missed his master very much, and, by licking his hand and doing his best to lick his face as well, accorded him a royal welcome home. Aunt Patty—she was no real relation, but Tom had always called her aunt—was setting the table for supper as he went in. She was a small, wrinkled little old woman, with a sharp tongue and a warm heart, and had kept house for Uncle Israel for nearly twenty years. She paused with a salt-cellar in each hand and viewed Tom and Star critically.
“Back again, be you?” she asked in her sharp, thin voice. “An’ that pesky dog-critter’s back again, too, ain’t he? If I’ve put him out o’ here once to-day, I’ve put him out forty times! Gettin’ the place all upsot an’ bringin’ in dirt! Well, what you find out this time?”
“Lots, Aunt Patty,” answered Tom cheerfully. “Star, you lie down like a good dog or Aunt Patty won’t love you any more.”
Aunt Patty sniffed. “Well, can’t you tell a body anything?” she asked. “You got most as close a tongue as your uncle, you have!”
“I’ve got a job, Aunt Patty. Cummings and Wright, the hardware firm. Two and a half a week. How’s that?”
“’Tain’t much for a big strong boy like you to earn, I’d say.”
“But I can only be there before and after school. I think two and a half’s pretty good wages, considering. And I found a room for a dollar and seventy-five cents. So that leaves me a quarter to the good, you see.”
“Leaves you seventy-five cents, don’t it? Where’s all your ’rithmetic?”
“Ye-es, I meant seventy-five,” responded Tom slowly. “Where’s uncle?”