I accepted the rebuke more mildly than I should have done on the previous day. “He never speaks of his future?” I said feebly.
“No, sir.”
There seemed to be nothing more to say. We had only gone a couple of hundred yards, but I paused in my walk. I thought I might as well go back and get my breakfast. But Mrs. Stott looked at me as though she had something more to say. We stood facing each other on the cart track.
“I suppose I can’t be of any use?” I asked vaguely.
Ellen Mary broke suddenly into volubility.
“I ’ope I’m not askin’ too much, sir,” she said, “but there is a way you could ’elp if you would. ’E ’ardly ever speaks to me, as I’ve said, but I’ve been opset about that ’Arrison boy. ’E’s a brute beast, sir, if you know what I mean, and ’e” (she differentiated her pronouns only by accent, and where there is any doubt I have used italics to indicate that her son is referred to) “doesn’t seem to ’ave the same ’old on ’im as ’e does over others. It’s truth, I am not easy in my mind about it, sir, although ’e ’as never said a word to me, not being afraid of anything like other children, but ’e seems to have took a sort of a fancy to you, sir” (I think this was intended as the subtlest flattery), “and if you was to go with ’im when ’e takes ’is walks—’e’s much in the air, sir, and a great one for walkin’—I think ’e’d be glad of your cump’ny, though maybe ’e won’t never say it in so many words. You mustn’t mind ’im being silent, sir; there’s some things we can’t understand, and though, as I say, ’e ’asn’t said anything to me, it’s not that I’m scheming be’ind ’is back, for I know ’is meaning without words being necessary.”
She might have said more, but I interrupted her at this point. “Certainly, I will come and fetch him,”—I lapsed unconsciously into her system of denomination—“this morning, if you are sure he would like to come out with me.”
“I’m quite sure, sir,” she said.
“About nine o’clock?” I asked.
“That would do nicely, sir,” she answered.