"I'd like one, very much."
"Well, we'll need a bobbin-boy at the mills pretty soon. I suppose—"
And then Grandpa Walker interrupted.
"I guess," he said, "'t we can keep the young man busy here for a while yet."
Robert Starbird looked curiously for a moment, from man to boy, and then, saying that he must go on up to Henry Cobb's to make a deal with him for his fleece, he went out to his buggy, got in and drove away.
Pen went back to his work in the field with a sinking heart. It had not before occurred to him that Grandpa Walker would object to his leaving him whenever he should find satisfactory and profitable employment elsewhere. But it was now evident that, if he went, he must go against his grandfather's will. His first opportunity had already been blocked. What opposition he would meet with in the future he could only conjecture.
With Old Charlie hitched to a stone-boat, he was drawing stones from a neighbor's field to the roadside, where men were engaged in laying up a stone wall. He had not been long at work since the dinner hour, when, chancing to look up, he saw Robert Starbird driving down the hill from Henry Cobb's on his way back to Chestnut Hill. A sudden impulse seized him. He threw the reins across Old Charlie's back, left him standing willingly in his tracks, and started on a run across the lot to head off Robert Starbird at the roadside. The man saw him coming and stopped his horse.
Panting a little, both from exertion and excitement, Pen leaped the fence and came up to the side of the buggy.
"Mr. Starbird," he said, "if that job is still open, I—I think I'll take it—if you'll give it to me."
The man, looking at him closely, saw determination stamped on his countenance.