The gang noticed my defection that winter and asked me what was wrong.
“I’m trying to educate myself,” I said. “Yellow Belly” sniffed, and called contemptuously: “Say, fellows! he’s got the book-bats, Priddy has.”
“Well,” I contended, “you fellows can hang around this drug-store corner from now till doomsday, if you want. I want to learn enough to get out of the mill. Besides, it’s none of your business what I do, anyway!” and with that fling I had to run off to escape the stones that were hurled at me.
Chapter XVI. How the Superintendent
Shut us Out
from Eden
Chapter XVI. How the Superintendent
Shut us Out
from Eden
THE numerous quarrels in which my foster parents indulged, and during which my aunt was not averse to proclaiming loudly from the open windows insulting comments on her neighbors, finally brought a lawyer’s letter to the house in which we were living, summarily ordering us to remove ourselves from the neighborhood. Aunt flew into a passion when the letter was read, and had all manner of sharp criticism for “neighbors who don’t tend to their own faults.” Uncle bowed his head for shame, while I went to my study, shut the door, and prayed through tears that God would, in some way, give me a good home like many another boy, and that He might make aunt and uncle more respectable.
Under the shock of this notice my uncle gave up his work, and said that he was determined to make a new start in some other place.
“I’m going to see, Millie,” he said, “if I can’t get somewhere to work, in God’s world, where there aren’t saloons to tempt us. I’ll send for you as soon as I find a place like that.”
Word soon came from him telling me to give up my work; that he had secured a place in a Connecticut cotton-mill. His letter also stated that we should live in a quiet little village where there were no saloons permitted by the corporation, and that our home would be in a little brick cottage with a flower bed and lawn inside the front gate!
“What a god-send this will prove,” said Aunt Millie, “to get away from the saloons. Maybe Stanwood’ll keep sober now. Let us hope so!”