"Yes," he answered, "I think you are right about that. They do talk, the hills and the woods and the quiet,—only a fellow grows dull, gets his ears full of electric gongs and push-bells, and forgets to listen."
The boy looked up with quick-witted question. "Y'aint f'm this part of the kentry, air you?" he asked.
"No. I am from—well, from Bessietown last. Where are you from?"
The boy laughed and glanced gaily at his briar-torn clothes. "F'm the woods," he said.
"My name is Bruce Steering."
"Mine's Piney."
They fell then to talking of many things, as they rode toward Poetical, but inevitably they spoke chiefly of the great State of Missouri. On the subject of Missouri the boy talked, as old Bernique had talked, with expansive naïveté. In his roamings he had ridden the State up and down, and had found much to love in it. "You'll like her, too, all righty," he told Bruce confidently, "whend you git broke to her." On one of youth's candid impulses to speak up for the life on the inside, the cherished desire, the gallant ideal, the buoyant fancy, he made a supple, sudden divergence in the conversation. "D'you know," he said, "they aint no place whur I'd drur be than Mizzourah ceppen only one."
"Where's that?" asked Bruce, and to his immense astonishment the boy answered quickly:
"Italy."
"Why, how does that happen, Piney? Ever been there?"