Paul looked up with an expression of pleasure in his face, for the nearer the hour of retiring approached, the more distasteful and lonely did the hogshead home seem, he could say nothing against it, for it had served him as shelter when he was utterly alone; but this idea of living in a house, where some of the womankind would care for him, was very agreeable to him.
“Mother says that she’ll board you, an’ see to your clothes, an’ do your washin’, for two dollars’n a half a week, an’ I think it would be awful nice for us all to live together.”
The boys thought so too; but they also thought of their hogshead, which seemed so cheerful to them, if Paul did have a disdain for it, and there was a momentary feeling that they would not like to leave it, no matter what inducement might be offered. Then there arose before them the vision of a “regular home,” wherein some one would care for and minister to their comfort, and the advantages of living in a hogshead grew very few indeed.
“Come up to the house in about an hour, an’ see how you like it,” suggested Nelly, thinking they were hesitating about accepting the offer. Then, after she had told them the street and number at which she lived, she added, “We’ll be home in a little while now, an’ then if you should think that your house is the nicest, you can still live where you are.”
“We’ll come,” said Ben, decidedly, for he had already made up his mind that he should accept the proposition. Then he led the others away very quickly, as if he had some plan in his mind, as, indeed, he really had.
“We’ll go home an’ fix up, an’ then we’ll take the eye right outer them, for they think these are the only clothes we’ve got.”
Johnny was delighted with the proposition of “taking the eye out” of Mrs. Green and her daughter by the splendor of their raiment, and the two walked so fast, in their eagerness to begin the serious operation of dressing, that Paul could hardly keep pace with them.
After they had taken the usual precautions to prevent any one from seeing them when they readied the vicinity of their home, and had succeeded in getting safely into the hogshead unobserved, they found the ruined merchant laying plans for the rebuilding of his shattered fortunes. It was in vain that they urged him to accompany them on their call. To all their arguments he had but one reply, and that was to the effect that he did not believe in their scheme of boarding.
“It’s jest nothin’ more nor less’n tryin’ to put on airs,” he said, impatiently. “Anybody’d think you ’xpected to be ’lected aldermen by ther way you’re swellin’ round; an’ old Mother Green’ll be tickled most to death when she sees what fools you’re makin’ of yourselves.”
In fact it did look just a little as if they were “swelling” considerably. Ben blackened Paul’s, Johnny’s, and his own boots until they would have answered for mirrors, and then he attended to his own toilet.