“We got some furs and truck, but we didn’t get the telegraph line.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Well, you see, only a few years ago people laughed at the idea of an Atlantic cable. But while we were hard at work up yonder surveying and clearing and setting up telegraph poles, didn’t some other fellows prove the possibility of an Atlantic cable by just going and laying it! So we were recalled.”
“But you had got pwetty far, anyhow.”
“Yes, we got pretty far.”
“You got to where ve foxes turn white and ve bears—”
“Yes,” said Mar, reflectively, and then there was a pause.
Jack looked at him. “Couldn’t you tell me about when you got vat bear, or”—in the tone of one grateful for small favors—“or how you found Mrs. Mar’s white—”
“I don’t seem to remember anything specially interesting about the bears or the foxes.” His far-off look gave the little boy a sudden feeling of being abandoned by his one friend. He stood it for a moment, and then suddenly twisted his lithe body round and buried his face in the crook of the arm that clutched the chair back. Mar raised his eyes and seemed to come home from some vast journey.