“Will you let me go with you?” asked the boy, feeling nervously in his pocket. “I cannot pay you much, but I will gladly give you what I can.” He pulled the last coin out of his pocket, and looked at it uncertainly as if he were not at all sure how much it was. “I will give you twenty-five cents.”
“That’s all right. Keep your money, young feller, and get in if you want to. I’ll be glad of yer company.”
The boy looked surprised and grateful, and without wasting any more words, clambered up to the hard wooden seat, and settled himself beside the farmer.
The road was rough, the wheels were rimmed with iron, and the board seat joggled unmercifully, so that the boy found it hard to answer his neighbor’s endless questions without biting his tongue in two; moreover, now that he was sitting down, after walking almost steadily since early morning, he found himself almost too tired to think; but he tried to be civil, since it seemed that if his companion was kind enough to refuse payment, the least he could do was to gratify his curiosity.
“Where might you be goin’, now?”
“My uncle lives in Frederickstown. His name is Lambert. Mr. Peter Lambert.”
“That so? I know Mr. Lambert. Well, I took you for a furriner.”
“I am not a foreigner.”
“Not but that you don’t talk good English, only sort of care-ful like. Like it wasn’t yer natural langwidge. What part of the country might yer be from, now?”
“I have never been in this country before. My father, who—who was Mr. Lambert’s brother-in-law, was a sailor, captain, also a trader. I don’t belong to any country. I have come back to work with my uncle, because my father is dead, and I have no other relatives.” The boy explained this in a dry, precise way, as if it were an answer that he had already had to make many times.