"On'y, you jist mind wot yer about!" said his mother, "and see't you keep dem clo'es from gettin' wet. I jist can't 'foard to hab dem spiled right away."
The fault with Dab Kinzer's old suit, after all, had lain mainly in its size rather than its materials; for Mrs. Kinzer was too good a manager to be really stingy.
Dick succeeded in reaching the boat-landing without falling in with any one who seemed disposed to laugh at him; but there, right on the wharf, was a white boy of about his own age, and he felt a good deal like backing out.
"Nebber seen him afore, either," said Dick to himself. "Den I guess I ain't afeard ob him."
The stranger was a somewhat short and thick-set, but bright and active-looking boy, with a pair of very keen, greenish-gray eyes. But, after all, the first word he spoke to poor Dick was,—
"Hullo, clothes! Where are you going with all that boy?"
"I knowed it, I knowed it!" groaned Dick. But he answered as sharply as he knew how,—
"I's goin' a-fishin'. Any ob youah business?"—
"Where'd you learn how to fish?" the stranger asked, "Down South? Didn't know they had any there."
"Nebbah was down Souf," was the somewhat surly reply.