“How did you get on all the winter?” asked Miss Prince.
The tramp shuddered. “Ugh! The winter!” he said. “I want to forget all about that! It’s summer now—glorious summer!”
He lay back in a patch of sun.
“I wish it was always summer, and there were always hay jobs. I’ve tried my hand at many kinds of work since I saw you last. I’m a huge success as a painter of signs. I couldn’t stick begging any longer. By the way,” he said, turning to Miss Prince, “that shilling was the last I ever took for doing nothing!”
Miss Prince laughed. She had already noticed that he was wearing a shilling piece on a piece of string round his neck.
“Now it’s a mascot?” she said.
“Yes,” said the tramp. “I believe if I’d carried it loose I’d have spent it one day. When you’re hungry you cease to be superstitious or sentimental.”
These long words bored the Cubs.
“Tell us a story!” said the twins, and Nipper suddenly smothered the tramp with an enormous armful of hay.
“No, no,” he said, “I must get back to work. Perhaps this evening I will tell you a story—when work’s done.”