"Michael, at your service, and if it's all one t' ye," said the person called, coming over. "I'm the boy! Will this be the box?"
"That is it; but how will you take it?" said Winthrop.
"Sure I'll carry it — asy — some kind of a way," said Michael, handling the trunk about in an unsettled fashion and seeming to meditate a hoist of it to his shoulders. "Where will it go, sir-r?"
"Stop, — that won't do — that handle won't hold," said the trunk's master. "Haven't you a wheelbarrow here?"
"Well that's a fact," said Michael, letting the end of the trunk down into the street with a force that threatened its frail constitution; — "if the handle wouldn't hould, there'd be no hoult onto it, at all. Here! — can't you let us have a barrow, some one amongst ye? — I'll be back with it afore you'll be wanting it, I'll engage."
Winthrop seconded the application; and the wheelbarrow after a little delay came forth. The trunk was bestowed on it by the united efforts of the Irishman and the ostler.
"Now, don't let it run away from you, Pat," said the latter.
"It'll not run away from Michael, I'll engage," said that personage with a capable air, pulling up first his trowsers band and then the wheelbarrow handles, to be ready for a start. "Which way, then, sir, will I turn?"
Winthrop silently motioned him on, for in spite of weakness of body and weariness of spirit he felt too nervously inclined to laugh, to trust his mouth with any demonstrations. Michael and the wheelbarrow went on ahead and he followed, both taking the middle of the street where the ice was somewhat broken up, for on the sidewalk there was no safety for anybody. Indeed safety anywhere needed to be cared for. And every now and then some involuntary movement of Michael and the barrow, together with some equally unlooked-for exclamation of the former, by way of comment or explanation, startled Winthrop's eye and ear, and kept up the odd contrast of the light with the heavy in his mind's musings. It had ceased to rain, but the sky was as leaden grey as ever, and still left its own dull look on all below it. Winthrop's walk along the streets was a poor emblem of his mind's travelling at the time; — a painful picking the way among difficulties, a struggle to secure a footing where foothold there was not; the uncertain touch and feeling of a cold and slippery world. All true, — not more literally than figuratively. And upon this would come, with a momentary stop and push forward of the wheelbarrow, —
"'Faith, it's asier going backwards nor for'ards! — Which way will I turn, yer honour? is it up or down?"