“So you're poor Jane's boy?” he said at last.
The boy nodded. He felt suddenly afraid of the spare old man with his long Roman nose and his fierce black eyebrows. A mist gathered before his eyes and the lamp shone like a great moon in a cloudy circle.
The Major looked at the bundle on the floor, and again he swallowed. Then he stooped and picked up the thing and turned away.
“Come in, sir, come in,” he said in a knotty voice. “You are at home.”
The boy followed him, and they passed the panelled parlour, from which he caught a glimpse of the painting of Great-aunt Emmeline, and went into the dining room, where his grandfather pulled out a chair and bade him to be seated. As the old man opened the huge mahogany sideboard and brought out a shoulder of cold lamb and a plate of bread and butter, he questioned him with a quaint courtesy about his life in town and the details of his journey. “Why, bless my soul, you've walked two hundred miles,” he cried, stopping on his way from the pantry, with the ham held out. “And no money! Why, bless my soul!”
“I had fifty cents,” said the boy, “that was left from my steamboat fare, you know.”
The Major put the ham on the table and attacked it grimly with the carving-knife.
“Fifty cents,” he whistled, and then, “you begged, I reckon?”
The boy flushed. “I asked for bread,” he replied, stung to the defensive. “They always gave me bread and sometimes meat, and they let me sleep in the barns where the straw was, and once a woman took me into her house and offered me money, but I would not take it. I—I think I'd like to send her a present, if you please, sir.”
“She shall have a dozen bottles of my best Madeira,” cried the Major. The word recalled him to himself, and he got up and raised the lid of the cellaret, lovingly running his hand over the rows of bottles.