"I'll use the American one!" declared Anton enthusiastically. "I've a lot of those marbles. I'm going right off now to see if I haven't enough."
He shifted his crutch to a more comfortable position under his arms and pegged across the yard to the house as hard as he could go.
"I've noticed," said the Forecaster, as he looked after the limping boy, "that Anton seems a lot happier since the flood. He used to be such a mournful little fellow."
"It's this weather work you started him on," the boy answered. "It means a lot to him."
"Ross," said the Weather expert, "I've been thinking a good deal about Anton and about all the rest of you boys in this neighborhood. Issaquena county is over ninety per cent colored and there aren't very many of you white boys, but the dozen or so that are here seem to me to be mighty good American stuff."
"They're a dandy lot," Ross agreed.
"Have any of you boys thought at all about what's going to happen to Anton, when he grows up? His father hasn't money enough to send him to college, or anything like that, especially since he lost so much by the flood, and, being a cripple, Anton's not going to have much of a chance on the plantation."
"I hadn't thought of it," Ross answered, "but it does seem as if he were up against it, doesn't it?"
"Why don't you boys make it easy for him?"
"How, Mr. Levin? We would in a minute, any of us. Everybody likes Anton."