But the strict principles applied during his tender years made him hesitate.
"I wish we hadn't lost the kitten," he said, feeling the need of a more cheerful companion.
"I'm a-goin' to git another dawg," announced Ricks.

"I'm sick of this here doin's." "Ain't we goin' to be turfmen ?" asked Sandy, who had listened by the hour to thrilling accounts of life on the track, and had accepted Ricks's ambition as his own.
"Not on twenty cents per week," growled Ricks.
Sandy's heart sank; he knew what a new dog meant.

He burrowed in the hay and tried to sleep, but there was a queer pain that seemed to catch hold of his breath whenever he breathed down deep.
It rained the next day, and they tramped disconsolately through village after village.
They had oil-cloth covers for their baskets, but their own backs were soaked to the skin.
Toward evening they came to the top of a hill, from which they could look directly down upon a large town lying comfortably in the crook of a river's elbow.

The rain had stopped, and the belated sun, struggling through the clouds, made up for lost time by reflecting itself in every curve of the winding stream, in every puddle along the road, and in every pane of glass that faced the west.
"That's a nobby hoss," said Ricks, pointing down the hill.

"What's the matter with the feller ?" A slight, delicate-looking young man was lying in the road, between the horse and the fence.