More than once had Walter suggested that there was no reason why the Indian should remain if he had business elsewhere.
"I suppose you think because I pulled you from under that tree you must stay here and work, but it is all a mistake. You have already repaid me ten-fold, and I don't want you to believe there is any necessity of stopping with me."
"Me wait," Sewatis would say, whenever the conversation touched upon this subject, and by the end of a week Walter would have felt decidedly lonely without his silent companion.
"There's one thing about it," the boy said once, when the Indian had refused to leave him, "while you are here I feel as if I could learn at any time how matters are at home. It wouldn't be much of a task for you to go into Portsmouth?"
Sewatis made a gesture which signified that such a journey would be as nothing.
"I think you had better go and see my mother presently. Of course she won't be worrying about me, for she knows I am able to take care of myself; but at the same time it will give her some satisfaction to know what I am doing. You could find my mother?"
Sewatis nodded.
"And it wouldn't be too hard work for you to tell her what we have done."
Another nod, and something very like a smile on the silent Indian's lips.
"If you don't open your mouth to her any oftener than you do to me, you might stay on the farm a year without her knowing what we have been doing."