When he saw Baggs he moved forward with a quick uneven step.
"Say," he proceeded, "can you let me have something to get a soda-
caffeine at a drug store? This ain't a stall; I got a fierce headache.
Come out with a dime, will you? My bean always hurts, but to-day I'm
near crazy."
Harry Baggs surveyed him for a moment, and then, without comment,
produced the sum in question. The other turned immediately and rapidly
disappeared toward the road.
"He's crazy, all right, to fill himself with that dope," Peebles
observed; "it's turning him black. You look pretty healthy," he added.
"You can work, and they're taking all the men they can get at the
Nursery."
The boy was sharply conscious of a crawling emptiness--hunger. He had
only fifteen cents; when that was gone he would be without resources.
"I don't mind," he returned; "but I've got to eat first."
"Can't you stick till night?" his companion urged. "There's only half a
day left now. If you go later there'll be nothing doing till tomorrow."
"All right," Harry Baggs assented.
The conviction seized him that this dull misery of hunger and dirt had
settled upon him perpetually--there was no use in combating it; and,
with an animal-like stoicism, he followed the other away from the road,
out of the hollow, to where row upon row of young ornamental trees
reached in mathematical perspective to broad sheds, glittering expanses
of glass, a huddle of toolhouses, and office.
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