“I know that there are a good many of these people hired by farmers; sometimes it turns out well, but often they are villains. Sometimes have concealed ailments and prove worthless; at other times stay through the winter, and after they have learned the method of work here, run off and hire out for wages in some other part of the country.”
“Husband, Mr. Wilson has been many years in this business, and I never knew him to bring any people of bad character.”
“He is too shrewd a Scotchman to do it knowingly, but he is liable to be deceived. I have thought and said that nothing would ever tempt me to have anything to do with a redemptioner, but when Peter came to tell about that boy it seemed to strike me differently. I said to myself, this is a new thing. Here’s a boy flung on the world in a strange land, with nobody to guide him, and about certain to suffer, because there are not many who would want a boy (for it would cost as much for his passage as that of a man), and he will be about sure to fall into bad hands and take to bad ways; whereas he is young, and if there was any one who would take the pains to guide him he might become a useful man.”
“That, husband, is just the light in which it appears to me.”
“So it seemed to me there was a duty for somebody concerning that boy, that there wouldn’t be allowing he was a man. When I cast about me I couldn’t honestly feel that there was any person in this neighborhood could do such a thing with less put-out to themselves than myself. Still I can’t feel that it’s my duty; he might turn out bad and prove a great trial, and I am not inclined to stretch out my arm farther than I can draw it back.”
“My father,” said the old gentleman, “was a poor boy, born of poor parents on the Isle of Wight. His father got bread for a large family by fishing, and by reaping in harvest; and his mother sold the fish, and gleaned after the reapers in wheat and barley harvest. The children as they grew large enough went out to service.”
“What was his name?” said Peter.
“Henry.”
“What relation was he to me?” said Bert.
“Your great-grandfather. When he was sixteen years old, with the consent of his parents, he came to Philadelphia in a vessel as passenger, and worked his passage by waiting on the cook and the cabin passengers. The captain spoke so well of him that a baker took him into his shop to carry bread. A farmer who hauled fagots to heat the baker’s oven offered to hire him by the year to work on his farm, and he worked with him till he was twenty-one. After that he worked for others, and then took what little money he had, and your grandmother who was as poor as himself, for her parents died when she was young and she was put out to a farmer, and they went into the wilderness. They cleared a farm and paid for it, raised eight children, six boys and two girls. I was the youngest boy; my brothers and sisters all did well, they and their husbands acquired property and owned farms. Your mother and I came on to this land when it was a forest. I with my narrow axe, she with her spinning-wheel; and a noble helpmate she was as ever a man was blessed with.”