"If I only had a father, I wouldn't mind letting him lick me now and then," replied Harry, to whom home seemed a paradise, though he had never understood it; and a father and mother, though coarse and brutal, his imagination pictured as angels.
"My father would learn you better than that in a few days," said Ben, who did not appreciate his parents, especially when they held the rod.
Harry relapsed into musing again. He thought how happy he should have been in Ben's place. A home, a father, a mother! We value most what we have not; and if the pauper boy could have had the blessings which crowned his reckless companion's lot, it seemed as though he would have been contented and happy. His condescension in regard to the flogging now and then was a sincere expression of feeling.
"What's old Walker been doing to you, Harry?" asked Ben, suspecting the cause of the other's gloom.
"He is going to send me to Jacob Wire's to live."
"Whew! That is a good one! To die, you mean; Harry, I wouldn't stand that."
"I don't mean to."
"That's right; I like your spunk. What do you mean to do?"
Harry was not prepared to answer this question. He possessed a certain degree of prudence, and though it was easy to declare war against so powerful an enemy as Squire Walker, it was not so easy to carry on the war after it was declared. The overseer was a bigger man to him than the ogre in "Puss in Boots." Probably his imagination largely magnified the grandeur of the squire's position, and indefinitely multiplied the resources at his command.
"What do you mean to do?" repeated Ben, who for some reason or other took a deep interest in Harry's affairs.