"That won't do!"
"Won't do?" repeated Lemuel, taking up the bill.
"Counterfeit," said the clerk.
V.
Lemuel stretched the note between his hands, and pored so long upon
it that the clerk began to tap impatiently with his finger-tips on
the register. "It won't go?" faltered the boy, looking up at the
clerk's sharp face.
"It won't go here," replied the clerk. "Got anything else?"
Lemuel's head whirled; the air seemed to darken around him, as he
pored again upon the note, and turned it over and over. Two tears
scalded their way down his cheeks, and his lips twitched, when the
clerk added, "Some beats been workin' you?" but he made no answer.
His heart was hot with shame and rage, and heavy with despair. He
put the note in his pocket, and took his bag and walked out of the
hotel. He had not money enough to get home with now, and besides he
could not bear to go back in the disgrace of such calamity. It would
be all over the neighbourhood, as soon as his mother could tell it;
she might wish to keep it to herself for his sake, but she could not
help telling it to the first person and every person she saw; she
would have to go over to the neighbours to tell it. In a dreary,
homesick longing he saw her crossing the familiar meadows that lay
between the houses, bareheaded, in her apron, her face set and rigid
with wonder at what had happened to her Lem.
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