“Matt, do you know you are the profoundest example of human patience I ever saw?”
“No; is that so?” replied Matt, with a laugh. “What makes you think so?”
“Well,” remarked Mr. Goodenough, leaning on his wagon-seat and looking down into the smiling countenance before him, “I have lived here beside Tom Noman and his wife for a dozen years, and know them well enough to be sure that an angel couldn’t long stand their fault-finding, and yet you have actually been there six weeks, and are still as cheerful as a lark on one of these beautiful spring mornings. Will you explain to me how you manage to stand it?”
While he was speaking a far-away look had come into Matt’s eyes, and a shudder shook his robust frame, as though he saw something very disagreeable to himself; but he answered, quietly enough:
“Mr. Goodenough, there are some things in this world harder to bear than either work or unkind treatment, and I prefer even to live with Tom Noman’s family rather than to go back to the life I have left behind me.”
With these words, Matt started up his oxen and went on, leaving Mr. Goodenough to resume his way more mystified than ever.
On the first day of June, Matt asked Mr. Noman for the previous month’s pay.
They were at work in the cornfield, and the boy’s request took his employer so by surprise that his hoe-handle dropped from his grasp.
“Me pay ye now!” he exclaimed. “What air ye thinkin’ of?”
Then, as though another idea had come to his mind, he said, persuasively: