“He’s a wonderfully strong creature, see what bones and muscles he’s got.”
The miller rolled out three barrels of flour for Whitman, and he and Wilson went into the mill leaving James seated on one of the barrels.
“What do you think of him?” said Wilson when they were inside?
“I think I don’t want anything to do with him. What do you think I want of a cripple?”
“That’s nothing; he cut himself with an axe after we landed, and I had to carry him in a wagon, but it’s only a flesh wound. He’s got a good pair of shoes, but has been so used to going barefoot that they make his feet swell.”
“The boy looks well enough, Mr. Wilson, if he was put into clothes that fitted him; is handsomely built, has good features, good eyes and a noble set of teeth, and that’s always a sign of a good constitution. But there don’t seem to be anything young about him, and if he had the use of both legs seems to have hardly life enough to get about. He is like an old man in a young man’s skin. Then he has such a forlorn look out of his eyes, as though he hadn’t a friend in the world, and never expected to have.”
“Well, he hasn’t, except you and I prove his friends. It is the misery, the downright anguish and poverty that has taken the juice of youth out of that boy. He never knew what it was to have a home, and no one ever cared whether he died or lived, but there is youth and strength; and kind treatment and good living, such as I know he would get with you, will bring him up.”
“Where did you get him that he should have neither parents, relatives, nor friends?”
“From a parish workhouse.”
“I judged as much.”