“I want Uncle Booge to make me a wagon to-morrow,” Buddy insisted. “He said he would make me a wagon to-morrow. With wheels.”
“And a seat into it,” added Booge.
“All right,” said Peter with irritation, “stay here and make a wagon, then,” but that night when Buddy was in the bunk and asleep, Peter had a word for Booge.
“I don't want to hasten you any, Booge,” he said, trimming the handle of a wooden spoon with great care as he spoke, “but day after to-morrow you'll have to pack your valise and get out of here. I don't want to seem inhospitable or anything, but when a visitor gets permission to stay over night to dry his boots, and then camps down, and loafs, and stays half the winter, and makes wagons and horses there ain't no room for in the boat, he's done about all the staying he's entitled to.”
“Buddy's been askin' to have me go again!” said Booge.
“No, he ain't,” answered Peter. “He—”
He caught the twinkle in Booge's eye and stopped.
“Let's wake Buddy up and ask him,” said Booge.
“Buddy ain't got anything to say on this matter,” said Peter firmly. “And I ain't sending you away because you are trying to play off from doing your share of wood sawing, neither. I'm Buddy's uncle, and I've got to look out for how he's raised, and I don't want him raised by no tramp, and that's how he's being raised. Every day I think I'll chase you out to saw wood, and every day you come it over me somehow, and I go, and you don't. I don't know how you do it, but you're smart enough to make a fool of me. That's why you got to go.”
“Is it?” asked Booge placidly. “I thought it was because you was jealous of me. Yep, that's what I was just thinkin'. He's jealous and he don't care nothin' for what Buddy likes, or wants, or—”