Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Voice of the People by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
page 94 of 433 (21%)
relieved by the interruption. "The things air all washed up, ain't they,
pa?"

Amos Burr scowled heavily upon the boy's head, his phlegmatic nature
goaded into resentment by his wife's ill-temper and the lamentations of
Jubal.

"I don't reckon you expect supper to keep waitin' till breakfast," he
said. "You've given your ma trouble enough 'thout makin' her do an extra
washin' up on your o'count. You've gone clean crazy sence you've been
loafin' round with them Battles. I don't see as you air much o'count,
nohow."

Nicholas raised his eyes to his father's face and looked at him
fixedly. For a moment he did not speak, and then he said slowly:

"I'm as good as a hand to you."

He was thinking doggedly that he had never hated any one so much as he
hated his own father, and that he liked the sensation. He wished he
could do him some real harm--hit him hard enough to hurt or make the
peanuts rot in the ground. He should like also to choke Jubal, who never
left off yelling.

Amos Burr spat a mouthful of tobacco juice through the open window,
flinching before the boy's steady glance. He was a mild-natured man at
best, whose chief sin was his softness. It would not have entered his
slow-witted head to protest against the accusations of his wife. When
they stung him into revolt he revolted in the opposite direction.

DigitalOcean Referral Badge