“He sneaked, pa,” Jim explained at the top of his voice. “When them show folks lit out, he just sneaked. Wasn’t he the ’cute one?”
“Goodness, ma, are we going to start an orphan asylum?” pa asked under his breath.
“Might do worse,” answered ma.
But Hi was not an orphan, but a young man out for himself, and after he had got into the wagon with the others and all were rolling once more toward Lee, he made that plain.
“I went straight to Mr. Hitchcock at the mill,” said he, “and told him I wanted to go to work. He said he’d take me on next Monday. Well, that was all right, only I didn’t have a cent in my pocket, but I someway didn’t like to tell him that. So I went down town, looking around, and the funniest thing you ever heard of, happened to me.”
“What?” demanded the other four at once.
“Well, there was a gentleman come riding in on horseback, and he had a little dog with him, a terrier. He was an awful cute little dog, and when the man went in the post office, I got to playing with him. The puppy didn’t know a trick—not a trick. Just plain ignorant, he was. The man was in the office a long time, so I got to teaching that dog some of the things he ought to know, and by and by the man come out and he see me, and he said I was giving that there dog the kind of schooling he ought to have.”
“Sho!” said pa.
“Then he up and asked me where I lived and whose boy I was, and I told him the whole story.”
“That was right,” said ma gently. “That was just what you ought to do, Hi.”