Page:The Professor's House - Willa Cather.pdf/121

 “How old are you?”

“I’m twenty.” He blushed, and St. Peter supposed he was dropping off a few years, but he found afterward that the boy didn’t know exactly how old he was. “I thought I might get a tutor and make up my mathematics this summer.”

“Yes, that could be managed. How are you fixed for money?”

Outland’s face grew grave. “I’m rather awkwardly fixed. If you were to write to Tarpin, New Mexico, to inquire about me, you’d find I have money in the bank there, and you’d think I had been deceiving you. But it’s money I can’t touch while I’m able-bodied. It’s in trust for someone else. But I’ve got three hundred dollars without any string on it, and I’m hoping to get work here. I’ve been bossing a section gang all winter, and I’m in good condition. I’ll do anything but wait table. I won’t do that.” On this point he seemed to feel strongly.

The Professor learned some of his story that morning. His parents, he said, were “moved people,” and both died when they were crossing southern Kansas in a prairie schooner. He was a baby and had been informally adopted by some kind people who took care of his mother in her last hours,—a locomotive engineer named O’Brien, and his wife. This engineer was transferred to New Mexico and took the foundling boy along with his own children.