"If these people think Aunt Nancy has no business to keep me here, I s'pose they are right, an' I oughter go away."
"Of course you've the privilege of doing as you please, Nancy Curtis," Mrs. Souders continued, "but I must maintain that it is wrong for you to be obliged to support two helpless children when it is hard work to make both ends meet. I am only sayin' this for your own good, Nancy, an' both Mrs. Hayes an' myself decided it was the duty of some one to talk with you about it."
The little woman made no reply to this, and Jack was forced to leave the pump, since his toilet had been completed.
"They've made her believe it," he said to himself as the tears would persist in coming into his eyes, "an' it's my place to tell her I'll go. Then she won't have any more trouble with Bill Dean's crowd."
He firmly believed it was necessary he and Louis should leave the farm, and the knowledge that Aunt Nancy depended upon him during this day, at least, was a positive pleasure.
It had been agreed he should wait upon the table.
Such dishes as could not well remain on the overladen board were to be left in the small summer kitchen, and the little woman had arranged a system of signals by which he could understand what she wanted.
Although it was yet too soon for supper, he went to his post of duty in order to be ready at the earliest moment Aunt Nancy should require his services, and there stayed, thinking mournfully of what he had heard.
In the mean while the stable was unguarded, for Jack had no idea danger was to be apprehended from that quarter, and at about the same time he entered the kitchen, Bill Dean said to his companions who had followed him into the shed,—
"I did have a plan for some fun, fellers; but now there's a bigger show than we ever struck. I don't reckon Hunchie knows very much about harnessin' horses, an' even if he does we'll set him wild."