“Who, Perkins? Oh, you can never tell what he’ll do. I gave it up long ago.”
“Well, sir, we was just talkin’ about things in general an’ I told him likely there’d be a case one of these days about a man quittin’ before his time was up, an’ I asked him how’d it likely come out. He said the quitter would lose, an’ yuh can eat me, Bradshaw, if he didn’t try to charge me five dollars fer it, and threatened soot if I didn’t pay by Saturday night.”
Bradshaw laughed. “You can never be up to Perkins,” he said. “But I must say it serves you right for going to him at all. Why didn’t you come to me in the first place?”
“That’s what I will do next time, you may be sure. But he can’t collect that five, can he, George?”
“I’m afraid he can, Hiram. Yes, I rather think you’d better settle with him.”
“Well, it’s a strange law. Lawyers get everything their own way.”
“Once in awhile it happens that way,” Mr. Bradshaw agreed. “And when you’re settling anyway there will be a ten-spot coming to me.”
“Legal advice,” answered Mr. Bradshaw, placing his thumbs in the upper pockets of his vest with an air of great complacency. “Haven’t I just told you you’d have to pay it?”
Riles was so dumbfounded that he pulled out ten dollars, threw it at the smiling lawyer, and proceeded down street without a word.
But having paid fifteen dollars for legal advice Riles was too shrewd a business man not to profit by it. That night he engaged another “barnyard savage,” being careful to hire him for a month. The man worked for four days and quit. Riles refused to pay him any wages, and hired another stranger on the same terms. In this way he was able to get through the fall without any direct outlay for help.
But the system was not very satisfactory. Too much time was lost hunting for new men, and the labourers always quit before they got into Riles’ way of managing the farm. The suggestion of the man who knocked him into the wheel of the buckboard stayed with him almost as tenaciously as the scar he then received. “Hire a green Englishman—some poor fool that doesn’t know any more than be a victim of a blood-sucker of your class.” Of course the words were rather strong—even Riles objected to them—but the sentiment was all right. Besides, it was doing the Englishman a good turn. It brought him away from a congested country and gave him an insight into life in a new land. With industry and application even an Englishman might become—_might become_—as prosperous and successful a farmer as he himself! There was something for a young man to look forward to!