His self-respect was injured somehow, and he
felt as if his lovely, gentle mother had been insulted. He would
like to have thrown a stone at the wagon, and in a rage he cried:
"You're a nice...." but he could n't think of any hard, bitter words
quick enough.
Probably the young lady, who might have been almost any young lady,
never knew what a cruel thing she had done.
XI
HOME INVENTIONS
The winter season is not all sliding downhill for the farmer-boy, by
any means; yet he contrives to get as much fun out of it as from any
part of the year. There is a difference in boys: some are always
jolly, and some go scowling always through life as if they had a
stone-bruise on each heel. I like a jolly boy.
I used to know one who came round every morning to sell molasses
candy, offering two sticks for a cent apiece; it was worth fifty
cents a day to see his cheery face. That boy rose in the world. He
is now the owner of a large town at the West. To be sure, there are
no houses in it except his own; but there is a map of it, and roads
and streets are laid out on it, with dwellings and churches and
academies and a college and an opera-house, and you could scarcely
tell it from Springfield or Hartford,--on paper.
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