“No,” growled the boy, “but don’t I tell you I know what Grandma’s thinking about?”
“How does your sister Berty take you?” asked Roger.
“Just like Grandma,” blazed the boy, in sudden wrath, “never says a word but a pleasant one, catches me in a corner and kisses me—kisses me!—just think of it!”
Roger thought deeply for a few minutes, while Bonny took up his miserable ramble about the room.
“Look here, boy,” he said, finally. “You do as I tell you for a week. Begin from this minute. Read that magazine, then go home with me to dinner. After dinner come back here and help me. I’m working on some accounts for a time. That will be an excuse to the boys for not playing cards.”
Bonny’s face was clearing. “A good excuse, too,” he muttered. “If I said I was going with Grandma or the girls, they’d laugh at me.”
“You tell them you are working on my books, and I am paying you. That will shut their mouths, and you’ll not object to the extra money.”
“I guess I won’t. I’m hard pushed all the time.”
“Don’t you save anything from your salary for Grandma?” asked Roger, keenly.
“How can I?” said the boy, indignantly. “She has brought me up to be clean. It takes nearly everything I get to pay my laundry bill—I dare say you think I’m a brute to be so selfish.”