“You have the accent, and a New Yorker handles his r’s pretty much as a Londoner handles his h’s; he tacks them on where they don’t belong, and leaves them off where they do. I’m a New Yorker myself, though you’d never suspect it. I outgrew the accent long ago. I haven’t been there for—let me see—more than twenty years—how time flies!”
“From New York!” Paul’s face lighted up with pleasure. “But I thought you said you were a trapper?”
“So I am. I came to this country when I left home, twenty years ago, and I’ve been here ever since.”
“And never been home since! How could you stay away from home for twenty years? And New York too? It seems to me I’ve been away for ages, and it’s only half a year. You bet I’ll go back the first chance.”
Amesbury’s face became grave for an instant.
“It’s too long a story—the story of my coming. I’ll tell you about it, perhaps, some time when I’m not so hungry,” and he smiled. “But how about you? What brought you?”
He listened with manifest interest while Paul related the happenings of the weeks just past, and until Dan finally set the pan of fried ptarmigan between the visitors, interrupting with:
“Tea’s ready, sir. Help yourselves t’ th’ pa’tridges an’ bread.”
And while Dan poured the tea and the two men stirred in molasses from the bottle, Amesbury hummed irrelevantly: