“Yes—them as comes after the apples in the loft and after the corn. They are good.”
“But don’t you get enough to eat at home?” I asked him.
“Home!—what, here?”
“No, I mean your home.”
“What, where I sleeps? Sometimes.”
“But you’re not obliged to eat these things. Does Mr Brownsmith know?”
“Oh! yes, he knows. I like ’em. I eat frogs once. Ain’t fish good? I ketch ’em in the medders.”
“Where you saved me when I was drowning?” I said hastily.
Shock turned his face away from me and knelt there, throwing scraps of wood, cinder, and dirt into the fire, with his head bent down; and though I tried in all kinds of ways to get him to speak again, not a single word would he say.
I gave him up as a bad job at last and left him.