“Well, what if I could?” he said, at length. “Do you think that trade is so good I could afford to keep two boys, when there isn't half work enough for one?”
Toby stirred the lemonade with renewed activity, as if by this process he was making both it and his courage stronger, and said, in a low voice, which Mr. Lord could scarcely hear:
“I didn't think that; but you see I ought to go home, for Uncle Dan'l will worry about me; an', besides, I don't like a circus very well.”
Again there was silence on Mr. Lord's part, and again the crooked eye glowered down on Toby.
“So,” he said—and Toby could see that his anger was rising very fast—“you don't like a circus very well, an' you begin to think that your uncle Daniel will worry about you, eh? Well, I want you to understand that it don't make any difference to me whether you like a circus or not, and I don't care how much your uncle Daniel worries. You mean that you want to get away from me, after I've been to all the trouble and expense of teaching you the business?”
Toby bent his head over the pail and stirred away as if for dear life.
“If you think you're going to get away from here until you've paid me for all you've eat, an' all the time I've spent on you, you're mistaken, that's all. You've had an easy time with me—too easy, in fact—and that's what ails you. Now you just let me hear two words more out of your head about going away—only two more—an' I'll show you what a whipping is. I've only been playing with you before when you thought you were getting a whipping; but you'll find out what it means if I so much as see a thought in your eyes about goin' away. An' don't you dare to try to give me the slip in the night an run away; for if you do I'll follow you an' have you arrested. Now you mind your eye in the future.”
It is impossible to say how much longer Mr. Lord might have continued this tirade had not a member of the company—one of the principal riders—called him to one side to speak with him.
Poor Toby was so much confused by the angry words which had followed his very natural and certainly very reasonable suggestion that he paid no attention to anything around him until he heard his own name mentioned; and then, fearing lest some new misfortune was about to befall him, he listened intently.
“I'm afraid you couldn't do much of anything with him,” he heard Mr. Lord say. “He's had enough of this kind of life already, so he says, an' I expect the next thing he does will be to try and run away.”