"I thought you had all last Saturday?"
"Well, that was only once."
"One whole day in three weeks is pretty well, I should say. I'll be bound you wouldn't have as much as that in Hobartown. Come, Tom, make the best of it, like a man. You might try twenty times and not get so good a place."
But Tom could not be comforted. He wanted to do something different. The mill was dirty, and he had to wear overalls from morning till night, and it wasn't very pleasant to work hard all day, and be ordered round by Jeduthun Cooke. He didn't like it, and nobody wanted to do what they didn't like. Mr. Antis had no business to make him hoe corn and potatoes. That wasn't what he was hired for, and he wasn't going to stand it.
"If you don't do any work only just as long as it is easy and you like it, you won't accomplish much," said Eben. "Every kind of work is hard, if you have to earn your living by it, and goes wrong sometimes. I like to study better than to do any kind of work, but if I had my living to get by it, I should grow tired of it a great many times, I know."
"You may preach till you are gray, Eben Fairchild, and you won't make me like milling a bit better, or think things are pleasant when they are not," said Tom. "How nice you have made those beds look!" he added, struck with sudden admiration at the result of Eben's labour. "There is some fun in work like that."
"It is hard work, though," returned Eben, straightening himself up, "harder work than hoeing corn, though it pays when it is done. I believe I haven't broken off a single plant. There goes five o'clock. I must go and make the fire for Mrs. Antis."
"Why, you don't do kitchen work, do you? I shouldn't like that."
"I'm not particular. I do anything that needs to be done," said Eben. "I guess my dignity won't suffer, and if it does, I guess it may just get well again."
The next morning, as Eben was putting on the tea-kettle, Mr. Antis came into the kitchen with a very disturbed face.