“There ain’t anything in this place that’s looking like it really is,” whimpered the younger. “There was a card with a zero on it and it wasn’t a zero—it was a nine—and he took our money.”
“Have you lost your money, boys?”
“All of it—every scrimptom of it,” bawled the older. “We ’ain’t got anything to get home with. We saved up to come down and see the city for a couple of days—and now it’s all gone.”
“We worked all winter logging—sweating and freezing in Cale Warson’s swamp—to earn that money, and that hell-hound down there took it and jammed it into his pants pocket. And how’ll we get home?”
Oh, I knew what logging in a swamp was! I knew what sort of wages were paid and how hard it is to save! That one sentence fairly lanced my conscience. “He jammed it into his pocket!” To Jeff Dawlin, who reached out and took in his money so easily, those bills were hardly more than so much paper, as he handled them.
But he had not been a boy in a country town where money is not come at so easily, where the little hoards grow so slowly, where there are so many dreams about the big world up in the attics under the patched coverlids—dreams which the little savings may bring to realization!
These were boys from my home town. Thank God, a lot of the cheap in me, the soul-dirt I had rubbed off in my associations, the cynical notions about right and wrong, the inclinations of a swaggering sport—yes, a whole lot of that slime was washed out of me right there and then by my new emotions. I don’t say I was made anyways clean—not all of it went. I have done many things since then to be ashamed of. But I was a blamed sight more of a man when I went up and patted those poor boys on their backs, standing between them.
“Don’t take on about it any more, fellows,” I said. “I guess I’ll be able to do something for you.” My tone was pretty important and they began to look me over; they had been so fussed up that they had not taken full stock of me till then.
“Golly! You’re rich, ain’t you?” gasped the older.
“Now about losing this money—where did you lose it?” I asked, swelling a little more because I knew I was in the way to make a big impression.