The good man from Basinburg groaned, saying after a minute:
“It’s too bad—too bad! You seem like a proper sort of a boy, with the right kind of management.”
“I shouldn’t want to bank on your judgment, squire—I mean deacon—seeing the way you let them sharpers pull the wool over your eyes.”
Deacon Cornhill relapsed into silence, while he watched the swift, dexterous movements of the cheerful bootblack, who began to sing a snatch of song. He was one of those broad-minded, whole-souled men who never see another in lowly circumstances without wanting to lift him up. The frank honesty of Little Hickory, as the boy persisted in being known, had won his confidence, and to have done that was to insure a friendship not to be swerved from its purpose. A new light came over his florid countenance, as he pondered, and forgetting him at work on his boot, he sprang suddenly to his feet, exclaiming:
“I’ll do it!”
Though taken completely by surprise at this frantic action, Little Hickory caught him by the wrist, and with the strength one would not have looked for in the youthful arm, he flung him back upon the bench, crying sharply:
“No, you don’t, till I get that other schooner in proper trim. You’d look well, wouldn’t you, with ’em in such shape?”
“Forgive me, my son.”
“‘My son!’ Forsooth, as the play-actor says: None of your soft solder on me. All I ask is for you to keep still till I can put the polish on this other brogan.”
It is needless to say that Deacon Cornhill obeyed, and not until the young workman was done did he say: