“You wait till I tell you. Their house burned down and they moved off and they just left the dog behind, as if he had been rubbish. That was more’n a year ago. And ever since he’s been sneaking and skulking and stealing his victuals, and been stoned and driven off with whips, and shot at till it’s a wonder he don’t go ’round biting everybody he sees.”
It was evident that Hobo’s lot had been a hard one, and that through no fault of his own. “Poor fellow,” Peggy said, resolving to atone, as far as a few weeks of kindness could, for that dreadful year of homelessness. “You seem to like animals,” she remarked, finding Hobo’s champion oddly interesting.
The boy cut off the head of a fish with a crunch. “I’d ought to,” he returned grimly. “I’ve got to like something and I don’t like folks.”
“What folks do you mean?”
“Don’t like any folks,” the boy persisted, and slashed on savagely.
Peggy was not prepared to believe in such universal misanthropy on the part of one so young. She guessed it to be a pose, and resolved that she would not encourage it by appearing shocked. “I don’t think you show very good taste,” she observed calmly, “disliking everybody in a lump that way. There are as many kinds of people as there are birds or flowers.”
“You ask any of the folks ’round here about Jerry Morton,” the boy exclaimed. “They’ll tell you what a good-for-nothing lazy-bones he is. They’ll say he isn’t worth the powder and shot to blow him up with.”
Peggy did some rapid thinking. “Are you Jerry Morton?”
“You bet I am.” His tone was defiant.
“Oh, I see,” said Peggy to herself. “People don’t like him, and so he fancies that he doesn’t like people.” This explanation which, by the way, fits more misanthropes than Jerry, resulted in making Peggy sorry for the boy in spite of the unbecoming sullenness of his face at that moment.