I rode down Purgatory Hill, hugging my joy and cursing those shotes.
III—ON ACCOUNT OF A GIRL
I TRUST you have noted, by this time, that my yarn is not a mere chronicle of disconnected incidents. Linked circumstances seemed to be tying me up. One happening had pushed me on to another and I had allowed myself to be pushed. It might be urged, of course, that I had no business in inciting a mob to play hob with Mr. Bird—but I had my own interests to consider, and I had been listening to my uncle’s teachings on the subject of looking out for number one.
“You know what happened to your father when he went to running his legs off on somebody else’s business,” he told me. “If it hadn’t been for me helping him in his other scrapes, your mother would have been playing hungryman’s ratty-too on the bottom of the flour-barrel oftener than she did. I hope you’ve got an ambition to be somebody and to have something.”
I did have, but you may be sure I did not tell my uncle that my principal hankering to get money was so that I might lay it at the feet of Zebulon Kingsley’s daughter.
Now, by the expressed wish of that daughter, I started out to control happenings and to set myself in new ways.
I passed the word to the Skokums, keeping my promise to Celene.
I was obliged to be indefinite, for I was guarding that little secret between her and myself as my most precious treasure.