any better’n what?” demanded the bone-weary Sammy, in no mood to endure scolding in any case. “Ain’t I done it all right? I bet you can’t find a weed in that whole bed, so now.”
“Great grief, kid!” gasped the older boy, seeing that Sammy was quite in earnest, “I don’t believe you’ve left anything but weeds in those rows. It – it’s a knock-out!”
“Aw – I never,” gulped Sammy. “I guess I know beets.”
“Huh! It looks as though you don’t even know beans,” chortled Neale, unable to keep his gravity. “What a mess! Mrs. McCall will be as sore as she can be.”
“I don’t care!” cried the tired boy wildly. “I saved just what Aggie told me to, and threw away everything else. And see how the rows are.”
“Why, Sammy, those aren’t where the rows of beets were at all. See! These are beets. Those are weeds. Oh, great grief!” and the older boy went off into another gale of laughter.
“I – I do-o-on’t care,” wailed Sammy. “I did just what Aggie told me to. And I want my half dollar.”
“You want to be paid for wasting all Mrs. McCall’s beets?”
“I don’t care, I earned it.”
Neale could not deny the statement. As far as the work went, Sammy certainly had spent time and labor on the unfortunate task.
“Wait a minute,” said Neale, as Sammy started away in anger. “Maybe all those beet plants you pulled up aren’t wilted. We can save some of them. Beets grow very well when they are transplanted – especially if the ground is wet enough and the sun isn’t too hot. It looks like rain for to-night, anyway.”
“Aw – I – ”
“Come on! We’ll get some water and stick out what we can save. I’ll help you and the girls needn’t know you were such a dummy.”
“Dummy, yourself!” snarled the tired and over-wrought boy. “I’ll never weed another beet again – no, I won’t!”
Sammy made a bee-line out of the garden and over the fence into Willow Street, leaving Neale fairly shaking with laughter, yet fully realizing how dreadfully cut-up Sammy must feel.
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune seem much greater to the mind of a youngster like Sammy Pinkney than to an adult person. The ridicule which he knew he must suffer because of his mistake about the beet bed, seemed something that he really could not bear. Besides, he had worked all the afternoon for nothing (as he presumed) and only the satisfaction of having earned fifty cents would have counteracted the ache in his muscles.
Harried by his disappointment, Sammy was met by his mother in a stern mood, her first question being:
“Where have you been wasting your time ever since dinner, Sammy Pinkney? I never did see such a lazy boy!”
It was true that he had wasted his time. But his sore muscles cried out against the charge that he was lazy.
He could not explain, however, without revealing his shame. To be ridiculed was the greatest punishment Sammy Pinkney knew.
“Aw, what do you want me to do, Maw? Work all the time? Ain’t this my vacation?”
“But your father says you are to work enough in the summer to keep from forgetting what work is. And look how grubby you are. Faugh!”
“What do you want me to do, Maw?”
“You might do a little weeding in our garden, you know, Sammy.”
“Weeding!” groaned the boy, fairly horrified by the suggestion after what he had been through that afternoon.
“You know very well that our onions and carrots need cleaning out. And I don’t believe you could even find our beets.”
“Beets!” Sammy’s voice rose to a shriek. He never was really a bad boy; but this was too much. “Beets!” cried Sammy again. “I wouldn’t weed a beet if nobody ever ate another of ’em. No, I wouldn’t.”
He darted by his mother into the house and ran up to his room. Her reiterated command that he return and explain his disgraceful speech and violent conduct did not recall Sammy to the lower floor.
“Very well, young man. Don’t you come down to supper, either. And we’ll see what your father has to say about your conduct when he comes home.”
This threat boded ill for Sammy, lying sobbing and sore upon his bed. He was too desperate to care much what his father did to him. But to face the ridicule of the neighborhood – above all to face the prospect of weeding another bed of beets! – was more than the boy could contemplate.
“I’ll run away and be a pirate – that’s just what I’ll do,” choked Sammy, his old obsession enveloping his harassed thoughts. “I’ll show ’em! They’ll be sorry they treated me so – all of ’em.”
Just who “’em” were was rather vague in Sammy Pinkney’s mind. But the determination to get away from all these older people, whom he considered had abused him, was not vague at all.
CHAPTER IV – THE GYPSY TRAIL
Mr. Pinkney, Sammy’s father, heard all about it before he arrived home, for he always passed the side door of the old Corner House on his return from business. He came at just that time when Neale O’Neil was telling the assembled family – including Mrs. McCall, Uncle Rufus, and Linda the maid-of-all-work – about the utter wreck of the beet bed.
“I’ve saved what I could – set ’em out, you know, and soaked ’em well,” said the laughing Neale. “But make up your mind, Mrs. McCall, that you’ll have to buy a good share of your beets this winter.”
“Well! What do you know about that, Mr. Pinkney?” demanded Agnes of their neighbor, who had halted at the gate.
“Just like that boy,” responded Mr. Pinkney, shaking his head over his son’s transgressions.
“Just the same,” Neale added, chuckling, “Sammy says you showed him which were weeds and which were beets, Aggie.”
“Of course I did,” flung back the quick-tempered Agnes. “And so did Uncle Rufus. But that boy is so heedless – ”
“I agree that Sammy pays very little attention to what is told him,” said Sammy’s father.
Here Tess put in a soothing word, as usual: “Of course he didn’t mean to pull up all your beets, Mrs. McCall.”
“And I don’t like beets anyway,” proclaimed Dot.
“He certainly must have worked hard,” Ruth said, producing a fifty-cent piece and running down the steps to press it into Mr. Pinkney’s palm. “I am sure Sammy had no intention of spoiling our beet bed. And I am not sure that it is not partly our fault. He should not have been left all the afternoon without some supervision.”
“He should be more observing,” said Mr. Pinkney. “I never did see such a rattlebrain.”
“‘The servant is worthy of his hire,’”
