“Round somewheres. Land sakes, don’t expect me to keep track of him, do you? Likely he’s in the cow-shed. John ain’t brought in the milk yet.”
“I guess I’d ought to go out and help,” mused Tom. “Only if I do I’ll get this suit dirty, maybe.”
“You keep away from the barn in them clothes, Tom Pollock. I guess there ain’t any more work than two able-bodied men can do. Supper’s most ready, anyhow. Ain’t you hungry?”
“I guess so,” Tom answered uncertainly. “I’ll go up and wash my hands.”
When Tom returned a few minutes later, Uncle Israel and John Green, the hired man, had come in, and Aunt Patty summoned them to supper. Uncle Israel folded his big, bony hands on the edge of the red cloth, bent his head, and said grace in his rumbling voice. Then he turned his sharp, cold-blue eyes on Tom.
“What all’d you do to-day, Tom?” he asked.
Tom recounted the day’s adventures in detail, neglecting, however, to explain the terms of Cummings and Wright’s offer. Uncle Israel listened attentively, eating steadily all the time as though taking food was a duty he owed rather than a pleasure. He was a tall man just past fifty years of age—Tom already showed promise of being like him as far as height was concerned—with a large, strongly-built frame on which he carried little flesh. He was long of arm and leg and neck, and his face held two prominent features—the large straight nose and the deeply set eyes which had the frosty glitter of blue ice. His face, tanned and weathered, was clean-shaven except at the chin, where a small tuft of grizzled beard wagged in time to the working of his strong jaws. The face was rather a handsome one, on the whole, handsome in a hard and rugged fashion that somehow reminded one of the granite hills of his native state. He said little during Tom’s recital, or afterward. A grunt or a brusque question now and then was about the sum of his contribution to conversation.
After supper, when Aunt Patty was rattling the pans and dishes at the kitchen sink and John Green had gone out to the steps to smoke his pipe, Tom took his courage in hand and told his uncle about the arrangement to which he had agreed with Mr. Cummings. Uncle Israel heard him through in silence, frowning the while. “And so,” concluded Tom, “I thought maybe you’d be willing to make up the fifty cents to me, sir. Would you?”
“No.”
“You mean you don’t want I should pay the bill to them that way?”