e
quietly, "No," he repeated. "That isn't what I want."

"You stay down at that place," Adams went on, hotly, "instead of trying
to be a little use to your family; and the only reason you're ALLOWED to
stay there is because Mr. Lamb's never happened to notice you ARE still
there! You just wait----"

"You're off," Walter said, in the same quiet way. "He knows I'm there.
He spoke to me yesterday: he asked me how I was getting along with my
work."

"He did?" Adams said, seeming not to believe him.

"Yes. He did."

"What else did he say, Walter?" Mrs. Adams asked quickly.

"Nothin'. Just walked on."

"I don't believe he knew who you were," Adams declared.

"Think not? He called me 'Walter Adams.'"

At this Adams was silent; and Walter, after waiting a moment, said:

"Well, are you going to do anything about me? About what I told you I
got to have?"

"What is it, Walter?" his mother asked, since Adams did not speak.

Walter cleared his throat, and replied in a tone as quiet as that he
had used before, though with a slight huskiness, "I got to have three
hundred and fifty dollars. You better get him to give it to me if you
can."

Adams found his voice. "Yes," he said, bitterly. "That's all he asks!
He won't do anything I ask HIM to, and in return he asks me for three
hundred and fifty dollars! That's all!"

"What in the world!" Mrs. Adams exclaimed. "What FOR, Walter?"

"I got to have it," Walter said.

"But what FOR?"

His quiet huskiness did not alter. "I got to have it."

"But can't you tell us----"

"I got to have it."

"That's all you can get out of him," Adams said. "He seems to think
it'll bring him in three hundred and fifty dollars!"

A faint tremulousness became evident in the husky voice. "Haven't you
got it?"

"NO, I haven't got it!" his father answered. "And I've got to go to a
bank for more than my pay-roll next week. Do you think I'm a mint?"

"I don't understand what you mean, Walter," Mrs. Adams interposed,
perplexed and distressed. "If your father had the money, of course
he'd need every cent of it, especially just now, and, anyhow, you could
scarcely expect him to give it to you, unless you told us what you want
with it. But he hasn't got it."

"All right," Walter said; and after standing a moment more, in silence,
he added, impersonally, "I don't see as you ever did anything much for
me, anyhow either of you."

Then, as if this were his valedictory, he turned his back upon