Tell her your uncle Ozias has taken all the shoes Robinson has got, and you're to come to him for 'em, an' to keep dark about it, an' let her think what she's a mind to.

Women folks can't know everything." "Yes, sir," said Jerome.
"You can come fer the shoes and bring 'em home after dark, so's nobody will see you," said Ozias Lamb, further.
So it befell that Jerome went for the work that brought him daily bread, like a thief, by night, oftentimes slipping his package of shoes under the wayside bushes at the sound of approaching footsteps.
He was deceitfully reticent also with his mother, whom he let follow her own conclusion, that Cyrus Robinson had been dissatisfied with their work.

"Guess he won't see as much difference with this work as he think he does," she would often say, with a bitter laugh.

Jerome was silent, but the inborn straightforwardness of the boy made him secretly rebellious at such a course.
"It's lyin', anyhow," he said, sulkily, once, when he loaded the shoes on his shoulder, like a mason's hod, and was starting forth from his uncle's shop.
Ozias Lamb laughed the laugh of one who perverts humor, and makes a jest of the bitter instead of the merry things of life.
"It's got so that lies are the only salvation of the righteous," said Ozias Lamb, with that hard laugh of his.

Then, with the pitilessness of any dissenting spirit of reform, who will pour out truths, whether of good or evil, to the benefit or injury of mankind, who will force strong meat as well as milk on babies and sucklings, he kept on, while the boy stood staring, shrinking a little, yet with young eyes kindling, from the bitter frenzy of the other.
"It's so," said Ozias Lamb.