“Yes,” whimpered the youth.
“Not to a soul! Finding your wife depends on it.”
“Can’t I go drag in the Potter brook?”
“You stay here in this house. You are going to eat some of this breakfast first of all.”
“I never can eat nothin’ more till she’s found,” wailed Mayo, with a canine whine in his nose.
But when the meal was on the table the Squire hustled him to a chair beside it and roared at him until he ate.
“It will never do for me to say one word of sympathy to the poor devil,” he pondered as he eyed the pitiful creature munching his food.
“If I loosen one bit he’ll be climbing all over me like a hungry dog. The only way to handle him is to cuff him when he stands up on his hind legs.”
While the Squire ate he pondered.
“She went with Cap Nymphus Bodfish on the packet, that’s how she went.”