“It’s hard enough, anyhow, for that matter, but there’s no use crying over it. I suppose you think I’m a jolly dog—most people do.—Well, I haven’t seen the day for these six years, that I couldn’t thank any body who’d help me out of it. Let’s sit down here a minute and talk it over. Do you suppose any body is really happy?”
“Any body!” Sam repeated wonderingly, but he sat down on the grass beside his stranger friend, who began hacking the root of the tree with his knife as he talked. He forgot his own troubles, wondering what such a good-hearted, careless man could be miserable about.
But the Major did not seem disposed to talk any more about himself; only he said—
“I never had a brother. I don’t know how I’d feel towards one; but if there’s any thing I can do for you let me know it. I’d advise you to go home, if you’ve got enough to take you there. California’s not the place for boys like you.”
“I don’t know that I am different from other boys,” Sam began to say.
SAM AND THE MAJOR.
“Oh, yes, you are,” the other interrupted. “You don’t swear, and you don’t drink, you don’t gamble,—now I’d like to know what other boy of your age, would stand a voyage round the Horn, and three months in California, without being as bad as the rest of us. Boys are worse I think.”
“Not if they had such a mother as I’ve got!” and then Sam thought that his mother was all now,—and his heart sank down again, for there was the new-made grave,—he was fatherless and she a widow.