The boy was silent.
"Are you getting ashamed of me?" demanded Rudolph, in a harsh tone.
"I am ashamed of myself," said Tony, bitterly. "I'm nothing but a tramp, begging my bread from door to door, sleeping in barns, outhouses, in the fields, anywhere I can. I'm as ignorant as a boy of eight. I can just read and that's all."
"You know as much I do."
"That don't satisfy me. When I grow up I don't want to be——"
Tony hesitated.
"You don't want to be like me. Is that it?" asked Rudolph, angrily.
"No, I don't want to be like you," answered Tony, boldly. "I want to have a home, and a business, and to live like other people."
"Humph!" muttered Rudolph, fixing his eyes thoughtfully upon his young companion. "This is something new. You never talked like that before."
"But I've felt like that plenty of times. I'm tired of being a tramp."