"To think he should say 'By your leave' to me. Why, one of the men wouldn't have troubled himself to do that, but would have flung himself down, and maybe stuck his feet up with his shoe soles against my clothes, and whether I wanted his company or no."
Adam's cogitation was perfectly correct, and by the time he came to the end of it, he could say with truth, "Sit down, sir, by all means. There's lots of room. Besides," he added, "nobody has any call to ask leave."
"Maybe not, in one sense, and so far as occupying a seat goes. But when a person you know is sitting quietly and alone, it is perhaps as well to find out whether your company will annoy him or not."
"I suppose that would be so if it were a gentleman," returned Adam, slowly.
"Do you mean a gentleman sitting?"
"Yes. I reckon very few folks would trouble about manners to a man o' no account like me."
"Then it would be their own loss. It always does harm to those who miss a chance of showing civility. I had a very good mother, Adam. Not a fine lady, according to the world's notion, but a hard-working woman, and she taught me this lesson, that one-sided politeness is not worth much. It should go everywhere, and be practised all round."
"You learned that lesson right off, and you've remembered it, sir," said Adam, on whose face an expression of interest was already manifest.
It was very curious, but during the brief moments that the two men had spent together, the manager succeeded in touching the most sensitive chords in the striker's nature. His love for his children, his own low self-estimate, and his memory of the mother who "gave up."
Mr. Drummond went back to the first. Bending over the lovely unconscious baby-sleeper, he touched its soft cheek with his lips, too gently to rouse it, however, and then looking into Adam's face with a smile he asked, "How old is she?"