“I’ve never refused to do anything for him when he asked me civilly,” said Dick.
“Hoighty toighty!” exclaimed the lady, sarcastically. “Must my boy bow down before you, you young whipper-snapper? The idea! Who are you enyway? Ef it hadn’t been for Silas and me, where’d you been now, you ungrateful cub? We’ve clothed you and fed you and eddicated you, and now you turn on us.”
“I think I’ve worked pretty hard for all I’ve received,” replied Dick, doggedly.
“What ef you have? It ain’t more’n you ought to do. You’ve finished the taters, hev you? Put ’em down, then, and don’t stare at me in that way. Go out and fetch me a pail of water.”
Dick obeyed without a word and then, as the mistress made no further demand on his services for the moment, went up to his bare little room just over the kitchen.
He opened the box where he kept his things and, diving down into a corner, fished up a small buckskin bag in which he kept the pennies, dimes, quarters, and several half-dollars he had been slowly accumulating from odd jobs he had done for various persons during the last three or four years.
He counted his little store slowly over.
“I’ve a great mind to——”
He never finished that sentence, for suddenly the door was thrown open with a bang and Silas Maslin rushed furiously into the room.
“You thief! Give me back the money you took from the store-till this afternoon!”