“I dun not know what tha means,” he said. “Happen tha ’rt talkin’ ’Merican?”
“That’s just what it is,” admitted Tembarom. “What are you talking?”
“Lancashire,” said Tummas. “Theer’s some sense i’ that.”
Tembarom sat down near him. The boy turned over against his pillow and put his chin in the hollow of his palm and stared.
“I’ve wanted to see thee,” he remarked. “I’ve made mother an’ Aunt Susan an’ feyther tell me every bit they’ve heared about thee in the village. Theer was a lot of it. Tha coom fro’ ’Meriker?”
“Yes.” Tembarom began vaguely to feel the demand in the burning curiosity.
“Gi’ me that theer book,” the boy said, pointing to a small table heaped with a miscellaneous jumble of things and standing not far from him. “It’s a’ atlas,” he added as Tembarom gave it to him. “Yo’ con find places in it.” He turned the leaves until he found a map of the world. “Theer’s ’Meriker,” he said, pointing to the United States. “That theer’s north and that theer’s south. All the real ’Merikens comes from the North, wheer New York is.”
“I come from New York,” said Tembarom.
“Tha wert born i’ the workhouse, tha run about the streets i’ rags, tha pretty nigh clemmed to death, tha blacked boots, tha sold newspapers, tha feyther was a common workin’-mon—and now tha’s coom into Temple Barholm an’ sixty thousand a year.”
“The last part’s true all right,” Tembarom owned, “but there’s some mistakes in the first part. I wasn’t born in the workhouse, and though I’ve been hungry enough, I never starved to death—if that’s what ‘clemmed’ means.”