"Pray what is your business?" I asked him.
"My business?" he repeated, pausing. "Ah! Yes. I will explain my
business, by your leave."
"Do you wish to come in?"
"Yes," he replied; "I wish to come in, master."
I had asked him the question inhospitably enough, for I resented
the sort of bright and gratified recognition that still shone in
his face. I resented it, because it seemed to imply that he
expected me to respond to it. But I took him into the room I had
just left, and, having set the lamp on the table, asked him as
civilly as I could to explain himself.
He looked about him with the strangest air,--an air of wondering
pleasure, as if he had some part in the things he admired,--and he
pulled off a rough outer coat, and his hat. Then, I saw that his
head was furrowed and bald, and that the long iron-gray hair grew
only on its sides. But, I saw nothing that in the least explained
him. On the contrary, I saw him next moment, once more holding out
both his hands to me.
"What do you mean?" said I, half suspecting him to be mad.
He stopped in his looking at me, and slowly rubbed his right hand
over his head. "It's disapinting to a man," he said, in a coarse
broken voice, "arter having looked for'ard so distant, and come so
fur; but you're not to blame for that,--neither on us is to blame
for that.
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