The man's mouth drew down into a long firm slit.
"Well, no, stranger," he answered, "I don't use that air word 'servant,' except when I pray to God Almighty."
"Ah!" said the Duke, and he remembered that he was in the United States of America.
The native went on with the conversation, "I reckon," he said, "you're on your way over to the big house."
The Duke divined the man's meaning, and explained that he had come ashore from the departing gunboat, under the impression that there was a village here, and some means of transportation to the residence of Mr. Childers. In reply the mountaineer talked deliberately for perhaps five minutes. Much of the idiom was to the Duke unintelligible, but he understood from it that this bay was a private yacht harbor, that the yacht was on the Atlantic Coast, that the keeper's lodge here was closed, and that Mr. Childers's residence was not near to this point, as he expected, but farther inland. The Duke inquired the distance from the coast.
The native screwed up the muscles on one side of his face, "Hit's a right smart step," he said.
The Duke was reassured, "You mean," he ventured, "three or four miles?"
The mountaineer seemed to ponder the thing a moment seriously, then he answered, "Well," he said, "I reckon hit's furder than three or four mile. I reckon hit's purty nigh on to forty-eight mile."
The Duke of Dorset laughed over his own astonishment. He was beginning to like this new type of peasant, who spoke of forty-eight miles as "a right smart step," who thought no man owned the mountains, and who reserved the word "servant" exclusively for his prayers.
The man looked seriously at the smiling face of the Duke and repeated the substance of his first query. "I reckon," he said, "you're a-wantin' to git over to the big house."