"What's the good of callin' it a vacation if a feller has to labor all the time?" he muttered.
Mr. Cane glanced at Sube over the top of his newspaper as he replied: "Now we are not going to open up that old discussion again. The way you boys take on over an hour's work around the place makes me sick! Why, when I was your age, Sube, I was glad to work from daylight until dark for just my board; and it wasn't any such board as you boys get, either."
"Yes, I'll bet you were glad," growled Sube.
"Certainly I was glad," his father assured him. "In those days boys expected to work. They weren't brought up with the idea of lolling at ease that you boys seem to have."
"Oh, occasionally I'd take a day off to go fishing or do a little studying--"
"I don't s'pose they had circuses in those days," interjected Sube.
"Oh, perhaps once during the summer my father would take me to see a good dog and animal show," explained Mr. Cane as he folded his napkin and left the table.
"They didn't use to go in swimmin' in those days, did they?" Sube muttered, taking care that his father did not hear.
"Or play ball?" supplemented Cathead cautiously.
"Ain't that jus' like a man?" growled Sube as the door closed behind their father. "Give a feller a lot of work to do and not even let him _kick_ about it!"
"What you gotta do, anyway?" asked Cathead.
"Well--I cut it the last time," ventured Cathead. "It's your turn."
"Yes, but it takes about half a day to cut the ol' lawn," grumbled Sube. "I'll bet your job won't take you half an hour. What you got to do, anyway?"
"Huh!--A snap!" sneered Sube, as he turned to his brother Sim, and asked: "What'd he give you?"
"Nuthin' but a picnic," declared Sube. "I'm the only one that's got a _real_ job!"
After breakfast Sube repaired to the barn, where he found the lawn-mower waiting for him.
"Ha! There you are, you ol' grass-chewer, you!" he exclaimed malevolently. "Thought you'd catch me off my guard, didn't you?--Well this is the way I treat vill'uns like _you_!" He seized an oil can, and thrusting it between the blades of the lawn-mower as he would have plunged a dagger between the ribs of an enemy, he gave several vicious squirts. "There!" he cried. "Take that!--And that!"