“No, but Chet Greene did, day before yesterday, and they told him they were laying men off instead of taking ’em on.”
“Humph! I guess thet Chet Greene don’t want to work. He’d rather fool his time away in the woods, huntin’ and fishin’.”
“Chet is willing enough to work if he can get anything to do. And hunting pays, sometimes. Last week he got a fine deer and one of the rich hunters from Boston paid him a good price for it.”
“Humph! Thet ain’t as good as a stiddy, payin’ job. I don’t want you to be a-lazin’ your time away in the woods,—I want you to grow up stiddy an’ useful. Besides, we got to have money, if we want to live.”
“Aren’t you going to try to get work, Uncle Si?” asked the boy anxiously, as he gazed at the large and powerful-looking frame of the man before him.
“To be sure I’m a-goin’ to go to work—soon as I’m fit. But I can’t do nuthin with my feet an’ my stomach goin’ back on me, can I?”
“I thought your dyspepsia was about over—you’ve eaten so well the past week. And you’ve walked considerably lately. If you got something easy——”
“Now, don’t you go to tellin’ me what to do!” cried the old man, wrathfully. “I’m a sick man, that’s what I am. I ain’t able to work, an’ it’s up to you as a dootiful nevvy to git work an’ support us both. Now you jest trot off to the Storburgh camp, an’ don’t you come home till you git work. An’ after this, you better give up havin’ anything to do with thet good-fer-nuthin, lazy Chet Greene.”
The boy’s eyes flashed for an instant and he was on the point of making a bitter reply to his relative. But then his mouth closed suddenly and he turned away. In silence he drew off his slippers, donned his big boots, and put on his overcoat and his winter cap. Then he pulled on his gloves, slung a game bag over his shoulder, and reached for a gun that stood behind a door.
“Wot you takin’ thet fer?” demanded Josiah Graham, with his eyes on the gun. “Didn’t I tell you to look fer a job?”