The Adventures of Joel Pepper

Excerpt: ...to get out of the chair. "I don't want any cent," said Joel, hotly, sticking the one between his finger and thumb up under the old man's nose. "Here, take it. Don't you see it? It's yours." "Mine? My cent?" repeated the old man, staring at it. "What d'ye mean? I hain't give ye no cent." "I found it in the road. You dropped it," said Joel, feeling tired to death. And dropping it hastily on the window-ledge he hurried off, swinging his tin pail violently. "What's the matter?" asked Mrs. Peters, at the sound of the voices; and, leaving the rag-bag suddenly, she hurried over the stairs. Old Mr. Peters, hearing her coming, picked up the cent, and, not stopping to put it in the old leather pocket-book, slipped it into his vest pocket, and seizing the newspaper, fell to reading. "Joel," called Mrs. Peters, as Joel was running out of the untidy yard, "what is it? Come here and tell me." "Let th' boy alone, can't ye, Marindy?" screamed Mr. Peters, irritably; "beats all how you allers interfere in my business--just like a woman!" he fumed, as Joel came back slowly. But Mrs. Peters was as persistent in her way as her husband, and she soon had the whole story laid bare. When that was done, she took Joel into the buttery and gave him a big wedge of custard pie. "You better go t'other way, and not past the keepin' room window," she said, "and eat it." Joel, with enthusiasm considerably abated as he examined his pie in the shadow of the big seringa bushes, concluded he didn't want it very much. But feeling very hungry, which was his usual condition, he finished it to the last crumb. "There warn't any sugar in, for one thing," he said critically. "I wonder why folks can bake pies who don't know how, and Mamsie never can have any." "That boy found your cent in th' road, and brought it clear way up here," cried Mrs. Marindy, on a high key, going into the keeping room, where the old man sat absorbed in his paper. "S'pose he did?" grunted old Mr. Peters. "I sh'd think...