“I didn’ hev nothin’ to eat fer two days, Tommy, an’ I’ve got me cramps bad.”
The same old cramps which had furnished the excuse for many an idle day! Tom knew those cramps too well to be affected by them, but he saw, too, that his father was a spent man; and he thought of what Mr. Ellsworth had said, “There wasn’t any First Bridgeboro Troop when he was a boy, Tom.”
“I wouldn’ never tell I seen yer,” he said. “I wouldn’ never-ever tell. It’s my blame that we wuz put out o’ Barrel Alley. It was you—it was you took me—to the—circus.”
He remembered that one happy afternoon which he had once, long ago, enjoyed at his father’s hands.
“An’ I know yer wuz hungry or you wouldn’ go in there in the daytime-’cause you’d be a fool to do it. I’m not cryin’ ’cause I’m—a-scared—I don’t get scared so easy—now.”
Fumbling at his brown scout shirt he brought forth on its string the folding membership card of the Boy Scouts of America, attached to which was Tom’s precious crisp five-dollar bill in a little bag.
“Gimme the pin,” said he. “Yer kin say yer sold it fer five dollars-like,” he choked.
“Is this it?” asked Slade, bringing it forth as if by accident, and knowing perfectly well that it was.
“Here,” said Tom, handing him the bill. “It ain’t only becuz yer give me the pin, but becuz yer hungry and becuz—yer took me ter the circus.”
It was strange how that one thing his father had done for him kept recurring to the boy now.