"You can call me Jim—Jim Jeffreys," said the boy. "He needn't be afraid of getting into any trouble if he takes me on. I've no father, and my mother won't worry about me," he added bitterly.
The entrance to the lane just then came in sight.
"This here's our way," said Jowett. "Supposing I go on a bit in front. I think it would be just as well to explain to Eames about my bringing you."
"All right," said Geoff. "I'll come on slowly. Where is the farm?"
"First house to the right; you can't miss it. But I'll come back to meet you again."
He hurried on, and Geoff followed slowly. He was hungry now as well as cold and tired—at least, he supposed he must be hungry, he felt so dull and stupid. What should he do if Farmer Eames could not take him on? he began to ask himself; he really felt as if it would be impossible for him to set off on his travels again like a tramp, begging for work all over the country. And for the first time it began faintly to dawn upon him that he had acted very foolishly.
"But it's too late now," he said to himself; "I'd die rather than go home and ask to be forgiven, and be treated by them all as if I deserved to be sent to prison. I've got enough money to keep me going for a day or two, anyway. If it was summer—haymaking-time, for instance, I suppose it would be easy enough to get work. But now——" and he shivered as he gazed over the bare, dreary, lifeless-looking fields on all sides, where it was difficult to believe that the green grass could ever spring again, or the golden grain wave in the sunshine—"I really wonder what work there can be to do in the winter. The ground's as hard as iron; and oh, my goodness, isn't it cold?"
Suddenly some little way in front he descried two figures coming towards him. The one was Jowett; the other, an older, stouter man, must be Farmer Eames. Geoff's heart began to beat faster. Would he be met by a refusal, and told to make his way back to the station? And if so, where would he go, what should he do? It had all seemed so easy when he planned it at home—he had felt so sure he would find what he wanted at once; he had somehow forgotten it would no longer be summer when he got out into the country again! For the first time in his life he realized what hundreds, nay, thousands of boys, no older than he, must go through every day—poor homeless fellows, poor and homeless through no fault of their own in many cases.
"If ever I'm a rich man," thought Geoff, "I'll think of to-day."
And his anxiety grew so great that by the time the two men had come up to him his usually ruddy face had become almost white.