Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/44

40 He was so kind to me and always had a pleasant word and a joke. I was nothing but a little barefoot boy and as shy as a rabbit and so afraid of Major Taylor I used to pray on the way that the old gentleman wouldn't 'be at home. He usually was there, however."

"Was my grandfather unkind?"

"No, not unkind, but he had a caustic wit, a little over the head of a barefoot boy. He used to look at me through his shaggy eyebrows and what intelligence I had seemed to leave me. I remember when your father left home. I was a very small chap but I remember it well, because after that being sent to the Mill House was more of a torture than ever before, as your father's going seemed to make Major Taylor's wit sharper. I did not know Mr. Tom Taylor had a child. I did hear he had married."

"It is very wonderful for you—my first traveling friend—to have known my father. I wish, somehow, you had known about me too. It is strange my grandfather didn't tell his neighbors about me. But here comes the porter to break up our housekeeping! I do hope I am going to remember to do all the things Mrs. O'Shea told me to do and to leave undone all the things she told me not to do about sleeping cars. I can't help thinking it would be better if