AN ERROR IN
the crowd. America 's good enough for me. What ought I to have said? 'Please,' or 'thanks awf'ly,' or how?"
There was no chance now of mistaking the man's nationality. Speech, gesture, and step, so carefully drilled into him, had gone away with the borrowed mask of indifference. It was a lawful son of the Youngest People, whose predecessors were the Red Indian. His voice had risen to the high, throaty crow of his breed when they labour under excitement. His close-set eyes showed by turns unnecessary fear, annoyance beyond reason, rapid and purposeless flights of thought, the child's lust for immediate revenge, and the child's pathetic bewilderment, who knocks his head against the bad, wicked table. And on the other side, I knew, stood the Company, as unable as Wilton to understand.
"And I could buy their old road three times over," he muttered, playing with a paper-knife, and moving restlessly to and fro.
"You did n't tell 'em that, I hope!"
There was no answer; but as I went through the letters, I felt that Wilton must have told them many surprising things. The Great Buchonian had first asked for an explanation of the stoppage of their Induna, and had found a certain levity in the explanation tendered. It then advised "Mr. W. Sargent" to refer his solicitor to their solicitor, or whatever the legal phrase is.
"And you did n't?" I said, looking up.
"No. They were treating me exactly as if I had been a kid playing on the cable-tracks. There was not
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