Читать книгу Wrecked on Spider Island; Or, How Ned Rogers Found the Treasure онлайн

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First one neighbor and then another had some work by which he could earn enough to pay for the small amount he ate, and finally, as he grew older, even these opportunities ceased.

He did not know that he had a single relative in the world to whom he could go, and while perfectly willing and even anxious to work, the townspeople called him a “lazy good-for-nothing, whose only desire was to eat the bread of idleness.”

“It’s mighty little of any kind of bread I get,” Ned once said to Deacon Grout, when the latter had made use of this remark because the boy applied to him for work. “I allers have done whatever I could find that would give me a square meal or a place to sleep; but it looks as if you folks wasn’t willin’ to spare that much. I s’pose you think a feller like me oughter pay for the privilege of stayin’ in this blamed old town.”

There is no question but that Ned’s provocation was great, yet it was an ill-advised remark, for from that day he not only had the reputation of being lazy, but impudent as well.