He straightened his back when Squire Walker spoke to him, and stood gazing with evident astonishment that the distinguished gentleman should condescend to speak to him.
"Come here, you sir! Do you hear?" continued Squire Walker, upon whom the boy's look of wonder and perturbation was not wholly lost.
"This way, Harry," added Mr. Nason, the keeper of the poorhouse, who was doing the honors of the occasion to the representative of the people of Redfield.
Harry West was evidently a modest youth, and appeared to be averse to pushing himself irreverently into the presence of a man whom his vivid imagination classed with Alexander the Great and Julius Cæsar, whose great deeds he had read about in the spelling book.
Harry slowly sidled along till he came within about a rod of the great man, where he paused, apparently too much overawed to proceed any farther.
"Come here, I say," repeated Squire Walker. "Why don't you take your hat off, and make your manners?"
Harry took his hat off, and made his manners, not very gracefully, it is true; but considering the boy's perturbation, the squire was graciously pleased to let his "manners" pass muster.
"How old are you, boy?" asked the overseer.
"Most twelve," replied Harry, with deference.
"High time you were put to work."