“Well, then,” resumed Mr. Byers, “doubtless you will meet with Harry Nyna, and I want you, Mose, to take a sharp observation of that young man, for if I can trust anything to my knowledge of human nature, I should say he was exceedingly progressive.”
“Progressive!” repeated Mose. “Well, why not?”
“Ay, let me tell you, I think a young man is altogether too progressive, when, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, he smokes his cigar in public, drinks brandy behind the barn-door, and plays cards on the hay-mow.”
“What!” said Mose, in astonishment.
“Ay, that’s a fact; and his mother—dear good lady,—never suspected it. She’s just like all the rest of the women—Lord bless ‘em! So good themselves they think everybody else is, and whoever they love, is next kin to perfection.”
“Harry is a good-hearted boy, though” said Mose thoughtfully.
“As good as a ripe October peach with a doubled kernelled pit in it, and generous as summer sunshine. But that is the great difficulty with him. He is too generous to say no, and goes in for a jolly time whenever he can have one. Nevertheless, I love him with all his faults, and really feel a fatherly solicitude for him. Not on his mother’s account, however. O, no, Mose! no! It’s purely for his own sake, although I think Mrs. Dorothy a most excellent woman, and should I ever think of marrying again, I would certainly give her the preference. But, then, that isn’t what I came here to talk about. Mose,” resumed the old man, after a few moment’s silence, “you are to be gone a long time, and perhaps I may never see you again, and possibly I may be dead when you come back.”
“O, I don’t think so,” said Mose.
“Nor I either,” continued Mr. Byers. “I only said possibly, and as I would like to be remembered, I have concluded to give you this;” so saying, he drew a monstrous old silver watch from his pocket, and laid it in the hand of his young friend.
Mose drew back, unwilling to accept of a gift which he knew was of so much value to its possessor, but the old man urged it upon him.