“I’ll throw you a broom an’ a shovel,” said the old man, in great glee. And presently that was done, a worn down broom and an old shovel with a broken handle tumbled in, and then, after minute directions how the work was to be done, Mr. Peters stumped back to the house.
“Well, I’ve set that lazy boy to work,” he said, rubbing his hands in delight as he sat down in the kitchen.
“What’s he doin’?” asked Mrs. Peters, rolling out pie-crust on the baking table. It didn’t in the least look like what Mrs. Deacon Blodgett considered worthy to cover her “apple filling,” Mr. Peters not allowing any such waste of lard and other necessary material. But it was called “pie” and as such had to be made regularly—so many a week.
“Never you mind,” Mr. Peters stopped chuckling to emit the sour reprimand. Then he sank back in his big chair and rubbed his hands again harder than ever.
Mrs. Peters exchanged a glance with her daughter, who caught the last words, as she was coming into the kitchen, her dust-pan in her hand. “Hush, don’t say nothin’,” she said as Miranda passed her to throw the sweepings into the stove, and she shook her head over in the direction of Mr. Peters in the big chair.
“I’ll find out for myself,” determined Miranda, and going out with her dust-pan for another accumulation. “Beats all what makes Pa act so like Kedar; what’s he ben up to, I wonder.”
Meantime, Joel worked on like a beaver; not only his hands and face were grimy, but his clothes were smeared from head to foot, while as for his shoes, well,—they were so covered with mud and straw and the general mess of the old pen, that no one would have known that they were shoes. But after he was fairly at work, Joel thought nothing of all this, but pegged away, his face streaming with perspiration, one happy thought running through his mind,—“I’m earning money, and helping Mammy,”—and he actually forgot his dinner, tucked away by Polly, in the paper bundle that he had carried under his arm, and set down carefully by the side of the barn before beginning his work. It was only when he heard a voice that he looked up.
“O my!” it was a boy considerably bigger than Joel looking over the pig-pen rail.
“What you doin’?”
“Working,” said Joel, shortly. He didn’t like this boy, and Mamsie didn’t approve in the least of him, so Joel had strict orders, whenever they met in the village on errands to the store, to keep as good a distance off as possible. So now he bent over his work again.