“‘Oh,’ says he, ‘ye don’t need to talk to me like that,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t goin’ to say annything or make ye anny trouble.’
“‘Oh, ye wasn’t?’ I says to him. ‘Ye’re a liar,’ I says to mesilf, ‘ye was, and they’s something queerer about ye than ye look, which is sayin’ a good deal.’ But I give the suspinders a jerk, and we wint on down the shore to a easier path up thim Palisades, it bein’ no long walk from the top to the trolley. What worried me worst was him bein’ so cheerful. It might ’a’ been from him not havin’ sinse enough to be anny other way, only whin it was plain robbin’ he’d thought I was after he’d been scared healthy and satisfyin’ entirely. It was the kidnappin’ soothed him, bad scran to him, and it was fair uneasy I was in the heart of me, almost suspectin’ they were brains in him somewheres.
“Well, maybe they was and maybe they wasn’t, I dunno, and maybe ’twas something worse than that. ‘And the mosquities won’t bite him,’ I says to mesilf. ‘If mosquities was humans, ’twould be easy of understandin’, but a mosquity ain’t got annything in his head exciptin’ teeth, and thim Jersey wans will bite whativer it is if it don’t bite thim first. Sure, they’s times whin dumb beasts can be teachin’ anny of us, and thim mosquities is after havin’ their own reasons. And do ye mind,’ I wint on to mesilf, ‘how he wint up that ladder like he was floatin’ on air?’ Faith, I think I was half believin’ him a ghost, excipt for his neck feelin’ a bit solid whin I pulled on the suspinders.
“Whin we come to the top, and the wind was back in him ag’in, I says: ‘And what might your name be, sor?’
“‘Courtney Delevan Schwartz,’ says he, lively as a grig.
“‘Is your father livin’?’ I says.
“‘Why, yis,’ he says, ‘he’s Charles B. Schwartz.’
“‘I’ve niver met him,’ I says. ‘Will he want ye back?’
“‘Why, of course,’ says he, ‘I’m the only wan he’s got.’