Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/48



"Go on, Lonely, and have a good time with the others!" said his mother, commiseratively, once more looking back at the desolate figure in the bald little sunlit yard.

Lonely gazed at Plato, flung a stone at the fence, and peered angrily out from under his sandy little eyebrow at his mother. She did not understand.

"Don't want to!"

"Go on, Lonely," she urged once more.

"I tell you I don't want to go fishin'!" he shrilled out testily. And then he spat hard, a couple of times, to get rid of the sudden lump in his throat.

His mother went back to her work. The sound of his father's hammer echoed more and more unevenly from the back roof—due to the fact that much stimulant had been called into service to brace the gold-miner's nerves against labor so dull and menial. The chorus of boy voices grew fainter and far away. They passed down through the watery Flats,