"You must spend it within doors then." John shook his head. "You ought; it must be dreadfully cold on this bark-heap after sunset."
"Rather, sometimes. Are you cold now? Shall I fetch—but I haven't anything fit to wrap you in, except this rug."
He muffled it closer round me; infinitely light and tender was his rough-looking boy's hand.
"I never saw anybody so thin as you; thinner much since I saw you. Have you been very, very ill, Phineas? What ailed you?"
His anxiety was so earnest, that I explained to him what I may as well explain here, and dismiss, once for all; the useless topic, that from my birth I had been puny and diseased; that my life had been a succession of sicknesses, and that I could hope for little else until the end.
"But don't think I mind it; John;" for I was grieved to see his shocked and troubled look. "I am very content; I have a quiet home, a good father, and now I think and believe I have found the one thing I wanted—a good friend."
He smiled, but only because I did. I saw he did not understand me. In him, as in most strong and self-contained temperaments, was a certain slowness to receive impressions, which, however, being once received, are indelible. Though I, being in so many things his opposite, had none of this peculiarity, but felt at once quickly and keenly, yet I rather liked the contrary in him, as I think we almost always do like in another those peculiarities which are most different from our own. Therefore I was neither vexed nor hurt because the lad was slow to perceive all that he had so soon become, and all that I meant him to become, to me. I knew from every tone of his voice, every chance expression of his honest eyes, that he was one of those characters in which we may be sure that for each feeling they express lies a countless wealth of the same, unexpressed, below; a character the keystone of which was that whereon is built all liking and all love—DEPENDABLENESS. He was one whom you may be long in knowing, but whom the more you know the more you trust; and once trusting, you trust for ever.
Perhaps I may be supposed imaginative, or, at least, premature in discovering all these characteristics in a boy of fourteen; and possibly in thus writing of him I may unwittingly be drawing a little from after-experience; however, being the truth, let it stand.
"Come," said I, changing the conversation, "we have had enough of me; how goes the world with you? Have you taken kindly to the tan-yard? Answer frankly."
He looked at me hard, put both his hands in his pockets, and began to whistle a tune.