“You’re just overloaded with money, old man!  Say, gi’ me a quarter to go to the ball game with?  I’m in trainin’, kind o’ like, an’ I ain’t afeard to say that mebbe I’ll turn out a first-class pitcher one of these days.”

“Tom,” said his father, trying to straighten his feeble frame, as his eyes brightened a little, “I wish I could:  I’d like you to go into anything that makes muscle.  But I can’t afford it.  You know I’m not workin’ yet, an’ until I do work the only hope of this family is in the little bit of money I’ve got in my pocket.”

“Well,” said Tom, thrusting out his lower lip, slouching across the room, and returning again, “I don’t think a quarter’s enough to trouble anybody’s mind about what’ll happen to his family afterwards.  I’ve heard a good deal from the mother about you bein’ converted, and changin’ into a different sort of a man, but I don’t think much of any kind of converted dad that don’t care enough for his boy to give him a quarter to go to a ball game.”

“Food before fun, Tom,” said the father, resolutely closing his hand upon such remaining silver as he had, and then thrusting the fistful into his pocket,—­“food before fun.  Ball isn’t business to this family just now, an’ money means business ev’ry time.  When I was away an’ couldn’t help it, things mebbe didn’t go as they ort to have gone, but now that I’m back again, there shan’t be any trouble if I know how to stand in the way of it.”

This expression of principle and opinion did not seem to impress favorably the eldest male member of the second generation.  Master Tom thrust out his lower lip again, glared at his father, took his hat, and abruptly departed.  There was no dinner at the Kimper table that day, except for such members of the family as could endure slices of cold boiled pork with very little lean to it.  Late in the afternoon, however, Tom returned, with an air of bravado, indulged in a number of reminiscences of the ball game, and at last asked why supper was not ready.

“Tom,” asked the father, “why didn’t you come back to-day with what I gave you money to buy?”

“Well,” said the young man, dipping his spoon deeply into a mixture of hasty pudding, milk, and molasses, “I met some of the boys on the street, an’ they told me about the game, an’ it seemed to me that I wouldn’t ’pear half a man to ’em if I didn’t go ’long, so I made up my mind that you an’ the mother would get along some way, an’ I went anyhow.  From what’s in front of me, I guess you got along, didn’t you?”

“Tom,” said the father, leaving his seat at the table and going around to his son’s chair, on the top bar of which he leaned,—­“Tom, of course we got along; there’ll be somethin’ to eat here ev’ry day just as long as I have any money or can get any work.  But, Tom, you’re pretty well grown up now; you’re almost a man; I s’pose the fellers in town think you are a man, don’t they?  An’ you think you’re one yourself too, don’t you?”