I hate to think of what I said. I said it kind of mechanical and wooden, the way we get to be from shifting the burdens off our own backs where they belong, onto somebody else's back—and doing it second-nature, and as if we were constructed slanting so that burdens could slip off. What I said was:
"I suppose we'd better tell the conductor."
"Tell the conductor!" said he, wondering. "What on earth for?"
"I dunno," says I, some taken back. I suppose I'd had some far notion of telling him because he wore a uniform.
"What do we want to tell him for?" this Brother-man repeated. "We know."
Oh, but that's come back to me, time and time again, when I've thought I needed help in taking care of somebody, or settling something, or doing the best way for folks. "What do we want to tell the conductor or anybody else for? We know." And ten to one we are the one who can do the thing ourselves.
"But what are we going to do?" I said. I think that his eyes were the kind of eyes that just make you say "What are we going to do?" and not "What are you going to do?" or "What are they going to do?"—same as most folks start to say, same as I had started.
For the first time the Brother-man looked helpless—but he spoke real firm.
"Keep him," he says, simple.
"Keep him!" I said over—since I had lived quite a while in a world where those words are not common.