June nodded. “Was all I wanted,” he declared stoutly. “Apples is powerful fillin’ fruit, Mas’ Wayne. What-all did you have?”
Wayne told him and June pretended to think very little of it. “That ain’ white man’s food,” he declared. “Old stewed-up beef ain’ fit rations for you. No, sir, ’tain’! Don’t you go insultin’ your stomach like that no more, Mas’ Wayne, ’cause if you do you’re goin’ to be sick an’ me an’ Sam’ll have to nurse you. Now you tell me what-all did you do, please.”
Wayne soon told him and June shook his head and made sympathetic noises in his throat during the brief recital. “Don’t you mind ’em, Mas’ Wayne,” he said when the other had finished. “Somebody’s goin’ to be powerful glad to give you a job tomorrow. You wait an’ see if they ain’.”
“I can’t do anything, I’m afraid,” said Wayne despondently. “They all ask me what I can do and I have to tell them ‘Nothing.’ I can’t even wash windows decently!”
“Who say you can do nothin’?” demanded June indignantly. “I reckon you’re a heap smarter than these yere Northerners! Ain’ you been to school an’ learn all about everythin’? Geography an’ ’rithmatic an’ algebrum an’ all? What for you say you don’ know nothin’?”
Wayne laughed wanly. “Arithmetic and those things aren’t much use to a fellow, it seems to me, when he’s looking for work. If I’d learned bookkeeping I might get a job.”
“You done kep’ them books for your stepdaddy.”
“That wasn’t real bookkeeping, June. Anyone could do that. The only things I can do aren’t much use up here; like ride and shoot a little and——”
“An’ knock the leather off’n a baseball,” added June.
“I guess no one’s going to pay me for doing that,” commented Wayne, with a smile. “Well, there’s no use borrowing trouble, I reckon. There must be something I can do, June, and I’ll find it sooner or later. I reckon I made a mistake in going around to the offices. If I’d tried the warehouses and factories I might have found something. That’s what I’ll do tomorrow.”