He acts as if he hadn't got any money, or any pocket, neither.

I s'pose that's what you're tryin' to do." "Don't know what you mean," returned Jerome, coloring.
"Oh, nothin'.

Go along," said his uncle.
But he spoke again before Jerome was out of hearing.

"There ain't any music better than a squeak, in the grind you an' me have got to make out of life," said he, "an' don't you go to thinkin' there is.

If you ever think you hear it, it's only in your own ears, an' you might as well make up your mind to it." "I made up my mind to it as long ago as I can remember," Jerome answered back, yet scarcely with bitterness, for the very music which his uncle denied was too loud in his ears for him to disbelieve it.
When Jerome was returning from Dale, an hour later, his back bent beneath great sheaves of newly cut shoes, like a harvester's with wheat, he heard a hollow echo of hoofs in the road ahead, then presently a cloud of dust arose like smoke, and out of it came two riders: Lawrence Prescott, on a fine black horse--which his father used seldom for driving, he was so unsuited for standing patiently at the doors of affliction, yet kept through a latent fondness for good horse-flesh--and Lucina Merritt, on his pretty bay mare.