"What can we do, Crippy?" he cried, as again he took refuge on a doorstep, weary, hungry and foot-sore. He had seen no opportunity to buy a breakfast with his six cents; it was then long past his usual time for dinner, and his hunger did not tend to make him more cheerful.
The goose was as unable to answer this question as he had been the ones Dan had previously asked, and the only reply he made was a loud cackling, which, in his language, signified that he thought it quite time that he had some dinner.
By this time, and Dan had not been on the doorstep more than five minutes, a crowd of boys gathered around, all disposed to make sport of the goose, and to annoy the boy.
"Say, country, why don't you sell your goose?"
"Does yer mother know you're so far away from home?"
These and other equally annoying questions Dan listened to until he could no longer control himself, and he cried to his tormentors:
"See here, boys, if you had somethin' you thought a good deal of, an' it was goin' to be killed an' roasted for dinner, what would you do?"
The boys were too much surprised by the question to reply, and Dan continued earnestly:
"This goose is Crippy, an' I've had him ever since he was a baby, an' got his leg broke. We come in here to find uncle Robert so's he could tell mother not to kill poor Crip, an' now we can't find him, an'--an'--well, we're jest two as lonesome fellers as you ever saw, an' if you knew jest how we did feel you wouldn't stand there pokin' fun at us."
For a moment none of Dan's tormentors spoke, and then the tallest one said sympathetically, as he seated himself by the country boy's side to show that he took both the boy and the goose under his protecting arm:
"They sha'n't plague you any more, an' ef I'd 'a' known how you was feelin' I wouldn't 'a' said a word. Now tell us all about it."
Dan was in that frame of mind where he needed sympathy, and he told the whole story, while the entire party stood around, interrupting him now and then by exclamations of surprise that his parents should have been so cruel as to even think of killing that faithful Crippy.
This consolation, even though it did Dan no material good, was very sweet to him, and he would have continued to sing the praise of his pet, had not one of the boys proposed that an effort be made to find uncle Robert's house. Then each one had a different plan to propose, none of them thinking that at that hour--four o'clock in the afternoon--it might be an act of charity first to give Dan and Crippy something to eat.