“They’re not carin’ what becomes of us—neither Twomley nor Sorber. Here you’ve been laid up, and it’s mid-winter and too late for us to get any job till the tent shows open in the spring. An’ we must beat it South like hoboes. I say ’tisn’t fair!” and the young voice was desperate.
“There ain’t many things fair in this world, Barnabetta,” said the husky voice, despondently.
“I—I’d steal that money from Neale Sorber if I got the chance. And he’ll be coming back to this very next town with it. That’s where he’s living now—at Milton. I hate all the Sorbers.” “There, there, Barnabetta! Don’t take on so. We’d have got into some good act in vaudeville ’fore now if I hadn’t had to favor my ankle.”
“You’d better’ve let me go into that show alone, Pop.”
“No, no, my girl. You’re too young for that. No, that warn’t the right kind of a show.”
The girl’s voice sounded wistful now: “Wish we could get an act like that we had in the tent show when Neale was with us. He was a good kid then.”
“Yes; but there ain’t many like Neale Sorber was. And like enough he’s gone stale ‘fore now.”
“I’d just like to know where he got all that money,” said the girl-voice. “And in a book, too. I thought ’twas a photograph album.”
“Hist!” said the man-voice, “’Tisn’t so much where he got it as it is, is he comin’ back here with it.”
“He’ll come back to Milton, sure. Bill Sorber isn’t so sick now.”