"What are 'peach-plucks'?"
"Fellows that tramp up and down Delaware and Jersey during the peach season. They get work at from fifty cents to a dollar a day, picking peaches. Sleep out on the ground and live on corn-dodgers and sow-belly. It's a star time with the bums, and I suppose there's five thousand or more of them ramble through the peach country. You see work aint heavy and they can have all the peaches to eat they want."
"But I should think that even at those small wages they might earn enough to keep them until they found better employment," said Ben.
"They're not after employment; they're out for an airing, and only work two or three days at a time. After the peaches play out, lots of 'em strike off through the country for the Wisconsin hop yards, where men and women pick in the fields together, and dance all night. It is the life they like. Money's no object. Let us go to sleep so that we can get up early." And he lay down at full length on the boards as though they were a bed of down. Ben followed his example; but the strangeness of his new position kept him long awake, thinking thoughts that had never before visited his mind. Once he gave his companion a gentle push, and asked:
"Boy, what is your name?"
"Tommy."
"Tommy, what are 'snipes'?"
"Cigar butts!" and Tommy laughed a sleepy little laugh, and was soon thereafter snoring.
Then came the sweet angel Sleep, and wrapped his arms around city and woodland, palace and hovel, police station and lumber pile, and took his weary devotees off on a tour through dreamland.
About two o'clock in the morning, Ben awoke shivering with cold. The damp night air, warm enough in the early evening, had chilled and aroused him. His restlessness startled Tommy who enquired what the matter was.