Page:The little blue devil (IA littlebluedevil00mackiala).pdf/68

spent his last cent, in the days when meals grew casual and shelter was a thing for which to be very thankful. Tony was thankful; he fought his way out of the West to the Middle West, doing “chores,” odd jobs, from ranch to farm, from farm to town. His only steady work was on a dairy farm in California for a month. He hated cows ever after that.

In Denton, Illinois, he was taken on in a box factory. He was glad to get the work, but he stayed less than a month. Even with better pay and shorter hours the life would have been intolerable to him, used as he was to the open air. The factory was badly managed, ill-ventilated, and dirty. Tony did not mind “outdoor dirt,” but this sickened him. He went on, growing more desperate every day. Somehow he had not seemed to make any friends here—not that he was ever an effusive person, but he felt lonelier than he had since leaving New Zealand. He could work, and nobody wanted him.

He reached Philadelphia by the night mail; he needed that lift, having walked the soles from his boots. He had no money at all, and he at once began the weary search for work. It was growing hopeless now, and a savage feeling was beginning to stir in his heart—a suggestion that it would really be much easier to steal. Oddly enough the idea of begging, for choice, had not occurred to him. He had virtually begged many times in the last four or five years, when there was no other way of getting food or travelling facilities, but it always stuck in his throat to ask, even now.

There was no luck the first day. He slept in an empty tank that lay in a vacant lot, and began the next day without any breakfast. When he came to the busy part of the town again the traffic half dazed him; he felt rather faint. It had been some time since he had had a really good meal, and it was longer since he had been in a large town. He