Crowded Out o Crofield | Page 9

and of its cash results.
"Now I've learned all about fly-fishing," he said, with confidence, "I can catch fish anywhere. I sha'n't have to go to fish out of that old mill-pond again."
"Six dollars!" exclaimed his mother, from behind the tea-pot. "What awful extravagance there is in this wicked world! But what'll you do with six dollars?"
"It's high time he began to earn something," said the tall blacksmith, gloomily. "It's hard times in Crofield. There's almost nothing for him to do here."
"That's why I'm going somewhere else," said Jack, with a sudden burst of energy, and showing a very red face. "Now I've got some money to pay my way, I'm going to New York."
"No, you're not," said his father, and then there was a silence for a moment.
"What on earth could you do in New York?" said his mother, staring at him as if he had said something dreadful. She was not a small woman, but she had an air of trying to be larger, and her face quickly began to recover its ordinary smile of self-confident hope, so much like that of Jack. She added, before anybody else could speak: "There are thousands and thousands of folks there already. Well--I suppose you could get along there, if they can."
"It's too full," said her husband. "It's fuller'n Crofield. He couldn't do anything in a city. Besides, it isn't any use; he couldn't get there, or anywhere near there, on six dollars."
"If he only could go somewhere, and do something, and be somebody," said Mary, staring hard at her plate.
She had echoed Jack's thought, perfectly. "That's you, Molly," he said, "and I'm going to do it, too."
"You're going to work a-haying, all next week, I guess," said his father, "if there's anybody wants ye. All the money you earn you can give to your mother. You ain't going a-fishing again, right away. Nobody ever caught the same fish twice."
Slowly, glumly, but promptly, Jack handed over his two greenbacks to his mother, but he only remarked:
"If I work for anybody 'round here, they'll want me to take my pay in hay. They won't pay cash."
"Hay's just as good," said his father; and then he changed the subject and told his wife how the miller had again urged him to trade for the strip of land along the creek, above and below the bridge. "It comes right up to the line of my lot," he said, "and to Hawkins's fence. The whole of it isn't worth as much as mine is, but I don't see what he wants to trade for."
She agreed with him, and so did Aunt Melinda; but Jack and Mary finished their suppers and went out to the front door. She stood still for a moment, with her hands clasped behind her, looking across the street, as if she were reading the sign on the shop. The discontented, despondent expression on her face made her more and more like a very young and pretty copy of her father.
"I don't care, Molly," said Jack. "If they take away every cent I get, I'm going to the city, some time."
"I'd go, too, if I were a boy," she said. "I've got to stay at home and wash dishes and sweep. You can go right out and make your fortune. I've read of lots of boys that went away from home and worked their way up. Some of 'em got to be Presidents."
"Some girls amount to something, too," said Jack. "You've been through the Academy. I had to stop, when I was twelve, and go to work in a store. Been in every store in Crofield. They didn't pay me a cent in cash, but I learned the grocery business, and the dry-goods business, and all about crockery. That was something. I could keep a store. Some of the stores in New York 'd hold all the stores in Crofield."
"Some of 'em are owned and run by women, too," said Mary; "but there's no use of my thinking of any such thing."
Before he could tell her what he thought about it, her mother called her in, and then he, too, stood still and seemed to study the sign over the door of the blacksmith-shop.
"I'll do it!" he exclaimed at last, shaking his fist at the sign. "It isn't the end of July yet, and I'm going to get to the city before Christmas; you see 'f I don't."
After Mary Ogden left him and went in, Jack walked down to the bridge. It seemed as if the Cocahutchie had a special attraction for him, now that he knew what might be in it.
There were three boys leaning over the rail on the lower side of the bridge, and four on the upper side, and all were fishing. Jack did not know, and they did