dollars. Better buy yourself a bottle of cough stuff. And the next time you want to earn some money, get a job in a conservatory." He had thrown a new banknote on to the quilt. Finch had later spent the money on roses for Ada Leigh.
Bronchitis was bad, but missing school for weeks was worse. He had lain, feverish, his chest torn by coughing, lonely in his attic room, listening to the sounds that came from below for companionship, unable to eat the too substantial meals Rags had carried to him, worrying all the while lest he fail again in his examinations.
But, when he was better, the urge to earn some money had come again. This time he asked Renny for work, and Renny had given him a saddle horse to exercise. All the Whiteoaks could ride, but the horses seemed to know that there was no masterfulness in Finch, and they tried all their favourite tricks when he rode them.
This one, just recovering from an accident, supposedly quiet as a sheep, had, in sportive caper, shied at her own gate, and given Finch a tumble on the driveway. Everyone, from Grandmother to Wakefield, had joked about Finch's mishap, and because the mare, elated by her riderless condition, had galloped to the woods, and an hour had been spent in capturing her, her flank grazed by a broken branch, Renny had paid Finch, not with money, but with a curse. The pain of a wrenched ankle was borne in silence, but a scowl darkened his forehead as he limped to and from the station. To be a figure of fun, that was his supreme humiliation.
One evening George said to him: "I know a fellow who would rig up a radio for us for next to nothing."
"H'm," grunted Finch, tearing a bite from a russet apple. "If we only had that next to nothing."
"They're any amount of fun," sighed George. "You can get wonderful concerts from New York, Chicago—all over, in fact."
"Good music, eh? Piano playing?"
"Rather. You've heard Sinclair's radio, haven't you?"
