“You mistake me. Would you be my friend?”
“I do not know what you mean, sir. I have been used to call the man I love my friend. If you mean that, you know I cannot choose whether I will be a man’s friend; it comes of itself.”
“Can I not make you my friend?”
“That is, make me love you?”
I was surprised at the propriety of his answers. I am unable at this distance of time to recall the defects of his language: and I disdain the mimic toil of inventing a jargon for him suitable to the lowness of his condition: the sense of what he said I faithfully report. I had before been struck with a certain correctness of thinking in him; but I now examined his countenance more attentively than I had ever before done, and thought I could distinctly trace in it the indications of a sound understanding and an excellent heart.
“I do not know, sir,” continued he. “If I see that you are a good man, I believe I shall love you. But if it happened that you were good and generous to me, I am sure I should love you very much.”
“You are very poor?”
“So they tell me. I never had more than a shilling or two at a time in my life.”
“It is a very sad thing to be poor?”
“Why, yes, so I have heard, sir. But, for my own part, I am always merry and gay.”