As on another day, we found the mill’s tenant cooking his food over the smoky oil stove.
“What?” he scowled, pretending surprise at sight of us. “Be you boys alive yet? I figured you was all dead an’ buried.”
We knew what he meant. He was grouchy because we hadn’t been working for him lately.
“We’re in school now,” Scoop said. “But we’ll work for you to-night after four o’clock if you want us to.”
“Um.… After four o’clock, hey? I’ll be lookin’ fur you.”
“We’ve covered the whole town,” our leader followed up, “so we’ll have to work in the country.”
“You kin work anywhere in the country fur all of me.”
Scoop scratched his head.
“A thing I hate about the country,” he said, [[183]]“is the distance between the farmhouses. It takes so long to get from one house to another that a fellow can’t do enough business to make it pay.”
“You ought to have bicycles,” the old man said.