“No”—but this time the word had a different sound.
“Not even got picked out yet? well, I want ter know! I thank you kindly for yer invitation, and I’ll be pleased to go in. Hev you got a ma and pa, or only a hired man?”
With a person of his persistence social topics might have now become embarrassing, but chance turned the subject at the right moment, taking the shape of a covey of quail, huddled under some cedar bushes by the roadside. The pieman spied them first, and at his sharp pull patient Maria stopped, although the spot was not very suitable for such a halt. Brooke expected to see the flock either rise in a body or disappear in the under-brush, but they did neither, only huddling still closer, while, inexperienced as she was, she noticed that even their ruffled feathers illy hid the leanness of their bodies.
“The game along this route has suffered this winter, and it’s missed me,” he whispered, preparing to raise the curtain on the opposite side of the wagon to the birds.
“Raise up a minute, please, so’s I can git some buckwheat out uv that box, and keep a hand on Tatters, else, lame as he is, he’ll out and flush the covey.”
Brooke did as she was told, while the pieman scooped up a handful of unhulled buckwheat from the box, and, letting himself down quietly from the wagon, scattered it among the bayberry bushes, not too near to the flock, yet in plain sight of it. Returning, he re-fastened the curtain and started the horse again before he said a word in answer to the interrogation of Brooke’s face. Reaching the next level, a dozen rods on, he half turned the wagon in order to give a clear view down the hill; the quail had crossed the road and were feeding eagerly upon the buckwheat, like a brood of chickens.
“Puzzled, ain’t yer, ter see a Yankee scatterin’ good fodder by the way?” said the pieman, highly gratified. “Well, it may seem uncommon, but the truth is these five years I’ve been peddlin’ and coverin’ a wild tract of country twict every week in cold and heat, rain and sun, I’ve come to think that man ain’t the only created thing that the Lord has cause to be proud uv or care fer. I’ve got kinder close to the wild folks along the route, which after all is but accordin’ to Scripture, that bids us ‘Consider the way the lilies grow and look to the fowls of the air,’ and says the Lord himself ain’t too busy to indulge in counting sparrers—(if he’d only worded it song or chippin’ sparrers it would be more comfortin’, though he couldn’t hev meant English ones, cause that island wasn’t discovered in those days, and so is of no account in Scripture, which must rile their pride).
“I allus did like birds, even way back when I followed the plough, and of course I knew some of them apart,—robins and swallers and phœbes and hawks and all the gamies,—and I jest plumb knew that when crows sat on the fence a-quaverin’, it was interestin’ and worthy conversation, most like, if we could only sense it. But it was after that hell-fire summer in the city that I got the call to treat ’em like my brothers and help ’em out with food in winter like we would neighbouring house folks.