"I would like to repay him," he thought, shaken
with a sudden spasm of hatred as he looked at the man before him. The
cheerless little kitchen, the cold, half-baked potatoes and sausages on
the table, and the drunken man asleep, seemed to him a kind of symbol of
the life that had been lived in that house, and with a shudder he turned
his face and stared at the wall.
He thought of a dinner he had once eaten at Freedom Smith's house. Freedom
had brought the invitation into the stables on that night just as to-night
he had brought the letter from the Chicago company, and just as Sam was
shaking his head in refusal of the invitation in at the stable door had
come the children. Led by the eldest, a great tomboy girl of fourteen with
the strength of a man and an inclination to burst out of her clothes at
unexpected places, they had come charging into the stables to carry Sam
off to the dinner, Freedom laughingly urging them on, his voice roaring in
the stable so that the horses jumped about in their stalls. Into the house
they had dragged him, the baby, a boy of four, sitting astride his back
and beating on his head with a woollen cap, and Freedom swinging a lantern
and giving an occasional helpful push with his hand.
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