“There is not much about me,” he began, “but I will tell you all there is.” It did not occur to his honest little soul that any story he might have chosen to concoct would have answered just as well for Miss Pauline. He neither added to nor in any way digressed from the exact truth.
“My father was an Englishman,” he continued, “and he lived for a while in India, for he had some business there, and my mother was a colored woman.”
“Oh, dear me!” said Pauline, “I would not like a father of one sort and a mother of another; which kind did you like best?”
“I do not remember my mother at all, but my father said she was beautiful and a good woman, but not just what people call a lady. She died when I was two years old, and then my father took me to England, and then after a while he married a real lady, a white English lady like himself, and they had some lovely white children; but the English mother never liked me. I think she couldn't somehow, Miss Pauline”—he seemed to reason as though he were afraid of blaming anybody—“and I thought I was in the way—in the way even of my father; and so one day I ran off and joined a circus that was coming to America. But I did not care for the circus very much, and so Job Starlight and Miss Hazel helped me to run away from that, and now I'm Miss Hazel's body servant, and the Bonifaces seem to like me, and I never was so happy in all my life before.”
“That's a very nice story, too nice for a secret. Why don't you tell it 'round?”
“Oh, because I don't want my father ever to hear of me, for then he might send for me, and I want to stay with the Bonifaces always. You won't tell, will you, Miss Pauline?”
“I would if I could,” she answered, with a spirit of mischief, “but you can't tell things if your head's like a sieve, and lets everything through, can you? Now is there nothing more?”
“No, there isn't,” Flutters answered, a little shortly, indignant at her answer. It hardly paid, he thought, to be kind to a young lady who acted like that. But fortunately Pauline did not notice the curtness of his reply.
“Then give me your hand, Flutters, and we'll go up to the house.”
“No, I thank you. Boys as big as I am don't need to be helped along by the hand.”