“Can’t I stay here over night?” persisted the boy. “I can pay for my lodging. It’s getting dark, and these parts are strange to me.”
There was something in the high-pitched voice that told me the lad was weak as well as cold, and the trembling tones appealed to me more strongly than the request itself. There was, too, a peculiar accent in them that excited my curiosity. So before Bill could again interfere I answered,
“Yes, you can stay; and if there is no other bed, you can sleep with me. I am sure mother will be willing.”
“You are soft and foolish. You don’t understand folks that go traipsing ’round the country,” growled Bill. But ignoring his protests I led the way to the house, with the strange boy following.
When we reached the kitchen and the lights were brought, Bill, with a surly air, carried the pail to the milk room. Mother coming in saw the boy and asked, “Who is this, David?”
“A boy who wants to stay all night, Mother,” I replied, “and I have invited him to sleep with me. Can he?”
“What’s your name?” asked mother, turning to the boy and looking him over with an inquiring glance that meant more than words.
“Jonathan Nickerson—they call me Jot for short. That is not my whole name, only a part of it. My father is ’way off, I don’t know just where, and my mother is dead; I couldn’t agree with the folks she has been staying with, so I must find work or go hungry.” As he spoke of his mother, his voice grew husky as though he were keeping back the tears.
There was a straightforwardness in his answer that pleased mother, as I knew it would, for she liked direct answers to questions. This may account for her keeping Bill Jenkins in her service most of the time since the Civil War, where he had served as a drummer for three months. He had appeared at her father’s door, ragged and disgusted with military life, after the battle of Bull Run, from which he had beaten his way with some of the rest of those who had got back to Washington.
Mother looked at the boy keenly from over her spectacles, but made no remarks, while I summed him up, as follows: He was very dark, thin in feature and in person, his eyes dark and bright, chin prominent; and notwithstanding thin-patched clothes and apparent weakness, there was a manner of independence and decision that cannot be expressed in words.