“See here, Joel.” The storekeeper leaned over his counter. “You come here a minute.”
“I ain’t going to work for Old Man Peters,” declared Joel, stoutly, standing quite still to regard the storekeeper with anything but pleasure.
Just as decidedly, “Yes, you will,” Mr. Atkins said; “’cause if you don’t, you can’t help your Ma, and be big like Ben.”
“I ain’t going,” began Joel. Then his voice died down, “O dear me, I ain’t,—I ain’t.”
“I don’t blame ye,” broke in two or three voices. “I wouldn’t do a stroke for sech a skin-flint,” added another. The storekeeper cast a reproachful glance in that direction, and said sharply, “I’m a-talkin’ to Joel Pepper just at present.”
Joel was wringing his small hands now, the picture of distress as he stood in the middle of the store, with little Davie quite gone in despair at this dreadful state of affairs, huddling up against him.
“To help Mamsie.” He could do it if he would only take this job that Mr. Atkins had gotten for him, and “be big like Ben.” “O dear me!” Joel didn’t see any of the men, nor the one sympathetic woman who hovered on the edge of the group to see how matters would turn out. He was lost to everything around him. And when at last Mr. Atkins said very coldly, “Oh, well, if you don’t want to help your Ma, Joel, why—” He burst out, “Oh, I do, I do,” and dashed up to seize the storekeeper by the arm, and hang to it screaming, “I’ll go to Old Man Peters’s, Mr. Atkins, I will!”
“That’s a good boy, Joel,” said the storekeeper, quite mollified, who had really been quite put to his wits to find something that one of the brood in the Little Brown House might do to help eke out the store of pennies that kept the wolf from the door. And lately, when Mrs. Pepper brought back the coats she made, he was struck with dismay, to see how white her cheek was, and how tired the bright eyes looked.
“She’s getting all beat out,” he said on one such occasion to his wife, as he locked up for the night and went home, which only consisted in going into the extension of the store built on to accommodate the growing needs of his family.
“Can’t you find her somethin’ for th’ boys to do, ’Biah?” said that good woman, setting the tea-pot down after taking off a cupful for herself. “No halfway stuff for me,” she always said; then it must be filled to the brim for Mr. Atkins, who couldn’t bear it strong.