"WHY, HE WAS ALL OVER THAT PASTURE QUICKER'N YOU COULD WINK!"
"That old skinflint said I hadn't any business runnin' cows jest before they was milked! I s'pose he thought I ought to stood there and let that ram have fun with me. Well, it took him an' me pretty nigh an hour to get 'em untangled, an' then he told me to drive 'em back to the pasture. I told him I'd go home before I'd trust myself in the lane alone with that black-faced sheep of his ag'in. Then he said I couldn't have any supper, so I started down once more, picked up plenty of rocks, an' after a while got 'em in. Then I came back to the house hungrier'n a bear. He had the nerve, after all that, to tell me he was a man of his word, an' so long as he'd promised I shouldn't have any supper, he'd stick to it. I didn't get any, either! Why, I could have eaten a brick that night, if there'd been butter on it."
"Didn't you have a thing to eat?"
"Not so much as a bite. I didn't want to come back an' say I got tired in less'n a day, so thought I'd make the best of it, an' p'rhaps in the mornin' things would be better."
"Of course then you got your breakfast."
"Oh, yes; then I got my breakfast! Want to know what I had? Well, if Mose Pearson flashed up sich grub, an' asked me to pay five cents for it, I'd tell him to go off somewhere an' lose hisself. There was three slices of some kind er bread all full of hard lumps. It tasted bad when you got one of 'em in your mouth. I thought they was plums first, an' took four of 'em. You ought ter seen me when I found out my mistake! Then there was some fried pork,—an' jiminy crickets! wasn't it salt?"
"Was that all they had?"
"There was a big dish of somethin' I called puddin'. I reckon it was made of apples smashed up, an' I guess there was some molasses in it, only I couldn't taste any. I spread a little on the bread, an' had to eat it, of course. Then I put some on the pork, an' got sick. I was through breakfast, an' all hands went outdoors. Why, look here, Teddy; it wasn't daylight, an' I'd been up as much as three-quarters of an hour! The farmer asked me if I could feed the calf. I told him if the calf didn't get any more to eat than I had since I'd been there, I could feed him an' not half try. That made him kind er mad; but he didn't say much, an' showed me how to go to work. If I had to feed that calf for a week, I wouldn't have more'n one hand left, an' not the whole of that."
"I know what it is," Teddy said, sympathetically. "Well, what else did you do?"
"Little of 'most everything, till it seemed as if my legs an' arms would drop off. Got somethin' to eat at dinner, though, an' that helped along; but when I turned in last night—say, Teddy, I allers wanted to know what a bed was like; but when you tell 'bout gettin' comfort out er a blanket stretched over a lot of ropes, why, I ain't in it at all! When I went up-stairs last night it seemed as if I was goin' all to pieces, an' I thought of you jest as snug in here as a bug, takin' your comfort countin' the money; an' I says to myself, 'The farm's no place for me, if my name is Carrots, so I'll take a sneak'. I got out of the window after the folks was asleep, an' I've walked ever since."