“Why not? I should like to run too, only I so soon get tired.”
“You shall have a blow some day. But I say, who’s your mother?”
“Mrs Corporal Joe Beane,” was the prompt reply, and the boy drummed the mule’s sides to make it go faster, but without effect.
“Well, where did you live before Joe Beane found you?”
“I don’t know,” said the boy, shaking his head, and Tom Jones stared hard with his mouth open before asking his next question.
“I say, how’s your head?”
“Quite well, thank you,” said the boy; “how’s yours?”
Tom scratched his as if he did not know.
“Look here,” he cried, after a pause, as a happy thought crossed his mind, and without pausing to state how his own head was, he fired off another question:—“I say, who did you live with before we found you?”
“I don’t know,” said the boy, looking at him wonderingly, and as if he felt amused by his companion’s questions. “You ask mother.”