Counting this dime, he now had a dollar and eighty cents, and it was the twenty-eighth day of July. “Thirty days has September—April, June and November—” he was saying to himself. Then July was one of the long ones. Well, that was a good thing! Been a great deal worse if July was a short one. Again he tried to whistle, and that time did manage to pipe out a few shrill little notes.
When Hero came running up the hill to meet him he slapped him on the back and cried, “Hello, Hero!” in tones fairly swaggering with bravado.
That night he engaged his father in conversation—the phrase is well adapted to the way Stubby went about it. “How is it about—'bout things like taxes”—Stubby crossed his knees and swung one foot to show his indifference—“if you have almost enough—do they sometimes let you off?”—the detachment was a shade less perfect on that last.
His father laughed scoffingly. “Well, I guess not!”
“I thought maybe,” said Stubby, “if a person had tried awful hard—and had most enough—”
Something inside him was all shaky, so he didn't go on. His father said that trying didn't have anything to do with it.
It was hard for Stubby not to sob out that he thought trying ought to have something to do with it, but he only made a hissing noise between his teeth that took the place of the whistle that wouldn't come.
“Kind of seems,” he resumed, “if a person would have had enough if they hadn't been beat out of it, maybe—if he done the best he could—”
His father snorted derisively and informed him that doing the best you could made no difference to the government; hard luck stories didn't go when it came to the laws of the land.
Thereupon Stubby took a little walk out to the alley and spent a considerable time in contemplation of the neighbour's chicken-yard. When he came back he walked right up to his father and standing there, feet planted, shoulders squared, wanted to know, in a desperate little voice: “If some one else was to give—say a dollar and eighty cents for Hero, could I take the other seventy out of my paper money?”