Charlie’s face, as he got off all this, was much the hue of a blood beet; but Uncle Isaac didn’t notice it, as there was no moon, and Charlie sitting back towards him.
“You know,” continued he, gathering courage now the ice was broken, “that Captain Rhines’s folks have been very kind to me. John and I are just like brothers. When we made the garden, she gave me some beautiful flower roots and bushes, and I want to let them know that I’m sensible of it. Fred feels just so. He says that when he was bitten so terribly, and almost at death’s door, Elizabeth and her mother took care of him in the daytime, and John nights; that Elizabeth kept the flies from him, bathed his head, gave him drink, and fanned him, for it was right in the heat of summer.”
“To be sure they’ll let them go. Why shouldn’t they?”
“We didn’t know.”
“But I know.”
“How shall we ask them?”
“Go right to the house, and ask them.”
“Fred says he don’t like to, because, though Captain Rhines has been real kind to him, yet he was such a bad boy, and went there in such shape after the dog bit him; and you know I came here in bad company, and, though they may like us and wish us well, perhaps they might not like for us to go with the girls in that way.”
“Benjamin Rhines was a poor boy, as myself, and we have got what we have by hard knocks. He is the last person, or his wife, either, to pay the least regard to all these things that you and Fred have conjured up. I’ll fix it for you.”