“Think so?” replied Jack, coolly. “Well, it’s too late now. Let him have it. I’ll trust to his liberality.”
“He’s got about as much liberality as an old sow with a litter of fourteen squealing pigs and a scarcity of swill,” was Sellick’s rather coarse but expressive comparison. “Not that I’ve the least thing agin him; nice old man, the squire! Come! what do you say now to hiring to me?”
This question recalled to Jack’s mind the obstacle which lay in the way of his return to Mr. Chatford’s house, and his joy became clouded by a serious trouble.
“Come and bring your dog, you know,” said Sellick. “I’m a famous story-teller; boys all like me; we’ll have grand times together. What do you think you can earn? Four dollars a month?”
“I should hope so, twice that!” replied Jack, thinking this was perhaps the best he could do.
“Say six dollars, when you ain’t going to school.” And Sellick went on to flatter and coax the homeless lad. “Anything I can do for ye? Come, ain’t there something?”
“Yes,” said Jack, “one thing. I haven’t felt just right about this old hat I took from Mr. Canning’s scarecrow. We’ve plenty of time, they are so far behind us,” casting a backward glance for the squire and the deacon. “Drive round that way, and I’ll leave it where I found it.”
Sellick consented. Taking a by-road, he crossed a bridge, and drove on the north side of the canal towards the Basin, soon striking the road which passed the Canning cornfield.
Jack jumped out at the well-remembered length of fence, which he climbed again, and, running betwixt the rustling rows, discovered the patient man-of-straw waiting, bareheaded, and surrounded by blackbirds, just as he had left him the day before.
“I wish I could return the ears of corn I took, in the same way,” he said to the constable, as he went back to the wagon; “but there are slight difficulties; so never mind!”