‘You’ll have to get a job, eh?’
‘I—I suppose so. But I don’t know——’
‘All right. I need a boy to drive a delivery wagon for my grocery. You ought to know this town well enough. I’ll pay yuh forty a month—start to-morrow. What do yuh say?’
‘Drive a—a horse?’
‘Two of ’em.’
‘But I have never driven a horse.’
‘Listen to me, son.’ Weed tapped him on the knee with a huge finger. ‘You’re goin’ to do a hell of a lot of things that you’ve never done. You’re goin’ to get calluses on your hands, wear dirty clothes, swear like a man. Your private teacher will be old man Experience. He’ll teach yuh things that ain’t in books, and when yuh get a diploma from his school you’ll be the first damn man that ever did. Most of us die in the first grade. You show up at the store at seven o’clock in the mornin’, and Jerry will teach yuh how to harness a horse.’
Weed got up abruptly, hitched up his trousers and went striding back across the lawn to his own porch, whence he went clumping heavily into the house.
Rex stared after him a bit foolishly, got to his feet and went into the house. The air seemed heavy in there, and there was a faint scent of flowers. He remembered now that some one had sent a huge bouquet of flowers.
He sat down in an old rocker, staring moodily at the wall, where an old crocheted motto, slightly askew, stared back at him. Before he could read he had been taught that single line of cotton words, done in red against a brown background—‘Yield Not to Temptation.’