'Well!' said the cripple, passing his hand over his face. 'I don't want them to stay at your farm at all. I want them to come here and take care of me. I cannot defend myself. If I try to be a man—that girl, I forget her name, you confuse me about it—told me to be a man, and I will be a man, if she will back me up. I have been a man somewhat, have I not, master, in chucking cousin Timothy's traps to the gull—that I call manly. You will see the girl—-Mehalah—I have the name now. I will keep my note-book open at the place. Mehalah, Mehalah, Mehalah, Mehalah.'
'I want to know——' broke in Elijah.
'Let me repeat the name ten times, and then I shall not forget it again.' Pettican did so. 'You called her something else. Perhaps we are not speaking of the same person.'
'Yes, we are. I call her Glory. I am accustomed to that name. Tell me what you want with her.'
'I want her and her mother to come and live with me, and take care of me, and then I can be a man, and make head against the wind that is now blowing in my teeth. Shall you see them?'
'Yes.'
'To-day?'
'Perhaps.'
'Then pray make a point of seeing the girl or her mother, in case she should not notice the flag, and say that I wish them to come here at once; at once it must be, or I shall never have courage to play the man again, not as I have to-day. They did put my monkey up by removing my crutches and hoisting them to the masthead, leaving me all by myself and helpless here. I should wish Mehalah to be here before Admonition and her beau return. They won't be back till late. There's a horsemanship at Colchester as well as a merry-go-round, and they are going to both, and perhaps to the theatre after that. There'll be junketings and racketings, and I—poor I—left here with no one to attend to me, and my crutches at the mast-head. You will tell the girl and her mother that I expect their help, and I will be a man, that I will. It would be something to boast of, would it not, if Timothy were to return and find his room occupied and his baggage picked to rags, and if Admonition were to discover that I have cousins as well as she?'
'You are bent on this?'