Clinton made no reply to their bantering, but kept on digging. After a minute’s pause, Jerry resumed the conversation by saying,—
“Clin, you are the queerest fellow I ever saw.”
“How so?” inquired Clinton.
“Why, I never come over here but I find you hard at work about something or other. You must love to work better than I do.”
“Yes, and such work, too,” chimed in Oscar; “you’re making a complete clodhopper of yourself. You’ll be an old man before you are a young one, if you don’t mind. Why doesn’t your father make his men do this hard drudgery, instead of putting it upon you?”
“My father doesn’t make me do this work,” replied Clinton, with some spirit; “I’m doing it for myself, and of my own accord.”
“I suppose your father doesn’t make you work at all,” said Oscar, with a sneer in his look and voice, which Clinton could not fail to observe.
“Yes, he does require me to work,” replied Clinton, “but no more than I ought to. I have plenty of time for play, besides having a little left for study, too, which is more than some boys, that I know, can say.”
“Yes,” resumed Oscar, “when you aint hard at work, digging like an Irishman, your father makes you sit down in the house, and mope over your books. I’m glad I havn’t got such a father to stand over me; aint you, Jerry?”
“I am so,” replied Jerry. “I don’t believe in making slaves of boys. It is time enough to go to work when we get to be men. I mean to enjoy myself while I am young, if I don’t any other time. But come, Oscar, we’ve stopped here long enough,—let’s be going.”