So saying, George disappeared through the open door, and, when he came out again, he carried over his shoulder a heavy bundle, at which Uncle Ruben gazed with suspicion.
“Everything in here belongs to me, and was purchased with money that I earned myself,” said the boy, who understood the look. “If you don’t believe it—”
Here George threw the bundle down upon the porch within reach of his uncle’s hand.
But the latter did not offer to touch it. Mean as he was known to be, and anxious as he was to secure every article about the house that would clear him a dime or two at public auction, he could not bring himself to make an examination of his nephew’s bundle.
“Well, then,” said the latter, once more raising his property to his shoulder, “I will bid you good-by.”
He hurried out of the yard, and up the road toward the hills, while Uncle Ruben stood in front of the porch and shook his riding-whip at him.
“That’s a powerful bad boy,” said he to himself, “an’ he’s goin’ to be a no-account vagabond, like his father was. But there’s a heap of strength in him, an’ it’s a great pity that he should waste it by foolin’ about in the woods, instead of puttin’ it on my farm, where it would do some good. He’d oughter be taken in hand, that boy ought.”
Uncle Ruben gave emphasis to this thought by hitting his boots a vicious cut with his whip, and then he went into the house, to see what he could find there.
CHAPTER II.
UNCLE RUBEN LEARNS SOMETHING.
While Uncle Ruben was wandering about from one room to another, taking a mental inventory of the different articles they contained, and trying to figure up how much ready cash they ought to bring under the auctioneer’s hammer, Jonathan Brown, who was one of the selectmen, stopped his horse in front of the barn, and hailed the house.