“Oh—h,” said Alice commiseratingly. “’Twas a bit hard, I d’ ’low.”
“It was mortal hard,” said he.
He raised the tumbler of beer to his lips, but set it down again untasted.
“To give Squire his due,” he said, “he did offer to keep I on for the same money what I did have when the wold man were livin’, but I wouldn’t have it. ‘No, sir,’ says I, ‘I bain’t a-goin’ to be takin’ orders in the place where I did use to be my own master’—’twas jist same as if I was my own master when my father were alive; he didn’t never interfere wi’ I, poor wold chap.”
It was perhaps Alice’s fancy that a momentary dimness veiled the hawk eyes—in any case it was only momentary.
“So here I be,” summed up the ex-warrener conclusively.
“Here you be,” echoed Alice; then, after a moment’s pause: “What be goin’ to do now?”
“I don’t know,” said the man.
“Where be goin’ to?”
“I don’t know,” he said again.