“I do work. But he makes me give him all I earn.”
“Then I’d run away—or shoot him!”
She tossed her long mass of straw-colored curls haughtily and walked from sight.
John Forge had not been able to hold his job in the newspaper office. He “didn’t get along with people.” He had opened a small shop on Main Street and gone back to cobbling shoes. Next day Ben Williams, the clothier, looked in at the Forge door and with half a laugh demanded:
“Can’t you dress that young one of yours so he won’t go around makin’ a nuisance of himself, John Forge? He was in my place this noon with a crazy plea for me to save all my bundles for Saturdays so he could deliver ’em and earn himself a suit to look respectable.”
John Forge went home with his weak jaw set grimly.
“I’ll break that boy’s foolish pride—or I’ll break his back!” he promised himself dourly.
IV
Nathan lay back in the hammock in the summer-evening depths of the front piazza and dreamed dreams with his eyes open. Down the street old man Bailey’s phonograph was grinding out a squeaky program of popular ballads. The moths were clustering around the sputtering arc lamps. On the near-by corner the Allen girl was shamelessly “flirting with a feller” who sat on his bicycle alongside the curb, one foot upon it to steady himself. Occasionally the girl tested the bell on the handle bars, and it ding-donged a high and low musical note interspersed with low laughter. The flirtation hurt Nathan. He was jealous of the older fellow’s freedom from “careful” parents.
“On’y seven years more—just seven years!—then I can marry her,” the poor young colt told himself. “Marry her whether Pa’ll let me or not. Oh, Bernie, Bernie, I love you. I love you more than anything else in the world! You’ll never understand!”