"You're nothin' but a kid in most things," sez Jabez, an' his voice was so friendly that I began to cool. Then he said, "Why, I never think of you like I do the rest o' the boys, though I rely on you a heap more. You've allus been like one o' the family, like; an' you an' Barbie have played around together until most o' the time I think of ya as about the same age; but if it's anything in the money line, why speak out. I was a young feller myself once, an' if you've happened to run up any debts on some o' your town trips, why I'll pass you over a little extra an' take it out in laughin' at you."
By George, he made it hard for me. One moment he'd tramp on my corn an' the next he'd scratch me between the shoulders; but the more he said the more I see that I did not have any regular place in the team; I was just a colt playin; beside, an' it gritten on me something fierce.
"Jabez," I sez, "it's hard for me to explain myself. I like this place an' you know it; but if you had a son o' your own, you wouldn't like to see him settlin' down before he'd struggled up a little. I'm old enough now to take a practical view o' life, an' I intend to become a business man."
He tried not to grin, I'll say that for him, but he couldn't cut it. "Why, bless your heart, boy, you never will be practical, an' as for business, you have about the same talent for it as a grizzly bear. You enjoy life as you go along, an' you enjoy it full an' free; a business man don't enjoy anything but makin' money. You may be rich some day, but it won't be from attendin' to business. Now take a lay-off if you want to, an' get this nonsense out of your system, then come back here. You know 'at Barbie misses you every minute you're away."
"All right," I sez, "I'll try it. I want to leave this place once, the same as if we was both grownup, not as if we had had a child's quarrel. I'll go an' I'll take my lay-off by bucklin' tight down to business; but if it don't seem to agree with me, why, I'll come back here an' make a report."
"Now, don't stay away long, cause the little girl is lonesome for company, an' as she sez to me the other night, you're better company than any book, an' you've got more intelligence than a school-teacher."
"Yes," I went on, "an' I don't require beatin' as often as a fur rug, an' my hair don't shed off as bad as a dog's, an' if I could just forget that I 'm a human bein' I wouldn't be any more bother than the rest o' the furnishings; but that is the one thing that 's on my mind just now—I 'm a man, an' it's time I began to practice at it."
Barbie wasn't quite so easy to get away from as Jabez was. She couldn't believe but what we'd been quarrelin'. When you came right down to givin' the actual reason for my departure without mentionin' any o' the true cause, it was a rather delicate project for a man who hadn't no experience in makin' political speeches: an' Barbie gave me a purty complete goin' over.
We talked it out for a week, but my mind was made up to go an' the' wasn't anything that could stop me, unless it was mighty important; an' at last she stopped arguin' an' just began to look sorry. That was hardest of all.
"Happy," she sez to me one night when we was ridin' back from Look Out, "don't you think I'm old enough now to ask Dad about what that letter meant?"