“You’re a pretty boy,” said Old Mr. Peters, shaking with wrath and at the prospect of losing him; “what kind of a mother have you got, I’d like to know, to bring you up like that?”
“She didn’t bring us up,” cried Joel, his black eyes blazing, and advancing on him so furiously that the old man stepped involuntarily back against the barn.
“No, I sh’d say not,” he cackled.
“And you aren’t going to say anything about my mother,” declared Joel, doubling up his small brown fists, and throwing back his head.
“Stop—get off,” said Old Man Peters, edging farther away; “well, she didn’t teach you to keep your promises,” he sneered.
“She did—she did,” cried Joel, wildly, “and you’re a bad old man, and I hate you.”
“Well, I sh’d s’pose if you think so much of her, you wouldn’t want to worry her,” said Mr. Peters, seeing his advantage. “How’d she like it to have you go home and say you’d shirked your work, hey?”
Down went Joel’s angry little fists to his sides, and his black head dropped.
“An’, beside, see,” said the old man, now quite elated, “that if you go home, an’ say you wouldn’t do my work, like enough she won’t ever let you take another job. Then, says I, Joel Pepper, where’d you be?”
Where Joel would be in such a dreadful state of affairs was more than he could say. And by this time he was beyond reasoning, so he dropped down to his knees on the edge of the dreadful mess in the pig-pen and began to crawl over under the sill of the barn.