“What is it?”
“Well, if you’d just let me go fishing once in a while,—say Saturday afternoons,—I’d never think of running away to go,—never.”
“That is, if I allow you to do what you choose, you won’t be disobeying me when you do it? Is that the idea?”
“Yes, sir, something like that.”
Joe felt that there was a difference, however, but he could not at that moment explain it. Besides, he wished to take the opportunity to air other grievances, of which heretofore he had never ventured to speak.
“I don’t have privileges like other boys, anyway,” he continued. “Tom Brown don’t have to work every day in the week, and he can go to town every Saturday if he wants to, and go to fairs, and have pocket-money to spend; and I don’t have anything, not even when I earn it. And Mr. Dolliver lets his Jim take his horse and go riding whenever he feels like it; but I aint allowed to go anywhere, nor do anything that other boys do!”
Joe paused, breathless and in much excitement.
Mr. Gaston said, “It’s your duty to obey your parents, no matter if they can’t give you all the pleasures that some other boys have. You are not yet old enough to set up your judgment against ours. We must govern you as we think best.”