Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/763

Rh authority, but in the ordinary human speech of one who has been to school.

Mr. Traveller answered the inquiries.

"Did you come here, sir, to see me?"'

"I did. I heard of you, and I came to see you.—I know you like to be seen." Mr. Traveller coolly threw the last words in, as a matter of course, to forestall an affectation of resentment or objection that he saw rising beneath the grease and grime of the face. They had their effect.

"So," said the hermit, after a momentary silence, unclasping the bars by which he had previously held, and seating himself behind them on the ledge of the window, with his bare legs and feet crouched up, "you know I like to be seen?"

Mr. Traveller looked about him for something to sit on, and, observing a billet of wood in a corner, brought it near the window. Deliberately seating himself upon it, he answered, "Just so."

Each looked at the other, and each appeared to take some pains to get the measure of the other.

"Then you have come to ask me why I lead this life," said the hermit, frowning in a stormy manner. "I never tell that to any human being. I will not be asked that."

"Certainly you will not be asked that by me," said Mr. Traveller, " for I have not the slightest desire to know."

"You are an uncouth man," said Mr. Mopes the hermit.

"You are another," said Mr. Traveller.

The hermit, who was plainly in the habit of overawing his visitors with the novelty of his filth and his blanket and skewer, glared at his present visitor in some discomfiture and surprise, as if he had taken aim at him with a sure gun, and his piece had missed fire,

"Why do you come here at all ?" he asked, after a pause.

"Upon my life," said Mr. Traveller, "I was made to ask myself that very question only a few minutes ago—by a tinker too."

As he glanced toward the gate in saying it, the hermit glanced in that direction likewise.

"Yes. He is lying on his back in the sunlight outside," said Mr. Traveller, as if ha had been asked