“Sit down, sir,” he told Jerome, a little impatiently, for he longed to be away for his fishing, and the stupid abstraction from purpose which unwonted spectacles always cause in childhood are perplexing and annoying to their elders, who cannot leave their concentration for any sight of the eyes, if they wish.
He indicated a chair, at which Jerome, suddenly brought to himself, looked dubiously, for it had a fine fox-skin over the back, and he wondered if he might sit on it or should remove it.
The Squire laughed. “Sit down,” he ordered; “you won't hurt the pelt.” And then he asked, to put him at his ease, “Did you ever shoot a fox, sir?”
“No, sir.”
“Ever fire a gun?”
“No, sir.”
“Want to?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jerome did not respond with the ready eagerness which the Squire had expected. He had suddenly resolved, in his kindness and pity towards his fatherless state, knowing well the longings of a boy, to take him out in the field and let him fire his gun, and change, if he could, that sad old look he wore, even if he fished none that day; but Jerome disappointed him in his purpose. “He hasn't much spirit,” he thought, and stood upon the hearth, before the open fireplace, and said no more, but waited to hear what Jerome had come for.
The Squire was far from an old man, though he seemed so to the boy. He was scarcely middle-aged, and indeed many still called him the “young Squire,” as they had done when his father died, some fifteen years before. He was a massively built man, standing a good six feet tall in his boots; and in his boots, thick-soled, and rusty with old mud splashes, reaching high above his knees over his buckskin breeches, Squire Eben Merritt almost always stood. He was scarcely ever seen without them, except in the meeting-house on a Sunday—when he went, which was not often. There was a tradition that he in his boots, just home from a quail sortie in the swamp, had once invaded the best parlor, where his wife had her lady friends to tea, and which boasted a real Turkey carpet—the only one in town.