“I’ve no doubt but that like everything else almost in this world, the business has its benefits. And by picking out the best and leaving out the worst parts of it, you may make a plausible showing so far as you are concerned, but you know yourself that it is liable to be abused, and is abused every day, and I don’t care to have anything to do with it.”
“But father,” cried Peter, with the tears in his eyes, “you promised me you would go and see him when the horses had done eating.”
“I forgot that, then I will go; I never break a promise.”
“I will bring the boy here,” said Wilson, “it is but a few steps.”
“Perhaps that is the best way, as, now I think of it, I want to trade with the miller for some flour.”
Wilson soon returned with our old acquaintance Foolish Jim, very little improved in appearance, as his clothes, though whole, did not by any means fit him. His trowsers were too short for his long limbs, and his legs stuck through them a foot, and they were so tight across the hips as to seriously interfere with locomotion. As to the jacket, it was so small over the shoulders and around the waist it could not be buttoned; a large breadth of shirt not over clean was visible between the waistcoat and trowsers, as instead of breeches he wore loose pants or sailor trowsers and no suspenders. The sleeves, too short, exposed several inches of large square-boned black wrists, and on his head was a Highland cap, from under which escaped long tangled locks of very fine hair; and his skin, where not exposed to the weather, was fair. Jim was so lame that he walked with great difficulty by the help of a large fence stake, his right leg being bandaged below the knee, and he was barefoot. He wore the same stolid, hopeless look as of old, and which instantly excited the pity and moved the sympathies of Peter to the utmost.
His father, on the other hand, could not repress a smile as he gazed on the uncouth figure before him.
“Do you call him a boy, Wilson? If he was anything but skin and bones he would be as heavy as I am, near about.”
“Yes I call him a boy, because he’s only nineteen, though there’s considerable of him.”
“There’s warp enough, as my wife would say, but there’s a great lack of filling.”